Robert Schumann's romantic universe invites us to approach it through five pieces of chamber music in step with the composer's mood: by turns fanciful, testy, or jovial, it can also be meditative, tender, or melancholic. A beautiful union of the viola and the clarinet.

MINIMAL marks the Percussions de Strasbourg's first foray into the world of minimalist music. Faithful to their legendary history, yet open to other sonic horizons, the ensemble asserts a plural identity, nourished by a sensitive dialogue between heritage, aesthetic diversity, and creative freedom. This recording, centered on Steve Reich's famous Mallet Quartet, brings together works such as Avant, pendant, et pourtant by Camille Pepin, where formal rigor and emotion intertwine, and Sunday by Shelley Washington, imbued with a gentle melancholy. Nik Bartsch adds his rhythmic textures and "ritual groove". Conceived by Minh-T�m Nguyen and shaped by the inspired ear of Vincent Peirani, MINIMAL reflects an openness to jazz, pop, and classical influences. It marks a turning point: a record conceived before the stage, envisioned as a living manifesto of contemporary creation.

Coup Fatal (Fatal Blow) is an original encounter between Baroque and Congolese music. Organized around Fabrizio Cassol (musical director), Serge Kakudji (countertenor) and Rodriguez Vangama (conductor/guitarist), they have been elaborating for several years a ‘Baroque recital’ the likes of which have never been heard. Live, the show is staged and choreographed by Alain Platel, who leads the company of 13 musicians into a universe where songs, traditional African instruments and dances are one. In this new exploration of the repertoire, Baroque ‘hits’ unite with folk music.

Classical Music

Soledad plays Soledad is the album we have been dreaming of. + Its creation is an obvious evolution. + These years spent at the heart of the music of Piazzolla, Stravinsky, Devreese and Gismonti have sculpted the band’s sound. + But they also have created a need for freedom, pushing us towards this visceral mode of expression that makes up the composition. + We want to push the stylistic boundaries and further exploit the potential of this formation more than ever, thus forging our own language. (Soledad)

What if a choir were to awaken the musical curiosity of young and old alike? The choir ch�ur43 presents original, imaginative arrangements for a choir of between four and sixteen voices, with nursery rhymes such as Les crocos, � la Volette, Ah vous dirais-je maman, Colchique dans les pr�s, Le beau tambour, Dame tartine, � la Claire fontaine, La cigale et la fourmi (with music by Gounod), and songs by Henri D�s, the project's godfather. Parents and adults too are invited to recall the joys, the fragile moments and the magic of childhood, with pieces such as Les Berceaux by Gabriel Faur�, Enfance by Philippe Hersant, and Elgar's Lullaby. Founded in 2008 by Am�lie Baudry and Myriam Lastel, ch�ur43 is a vocal a capella ensemble composed of 16 young amateur singers and conducted by Myriam Lastel. The present release is accompanied by a booklet containing all the sung texts, with illustrations by Laurine Lesaint that allow the children to follow each song.

The French violinist Hugues Borsarello draws this programme of miniatures from the repertory of his instrument and from the great operatic arias, transcribed for violin and orchestra: ‘My idea was to relate a French history of music over the course of three centuries, in the form of short pieces.’ Lully’s Marche pour la cérémonie des Turcs rubs shoulders with arias by Bizet, Saint-Saëns and Offenbach, Satie’s Gymnopédie no.3 and Gounod’s Ave Maria. All these universally known pieces ‘are perfectly suited to the soul of the violin’, says Borsarello, who is joined by prestigious guests: cellist Gautier Capuçon for Vieuxtemps’s Duo Brillant, guitarist Thomas Dutronc for Django Reinhardt’s celebrated Nuages, pianist Frank Braley.

And this programme doesn’t neglect the classics of the violin, including Ysaÿe’s magnificent Berceuse de l'enfant pauvre. Vieuxtemps’s famous set of variations on Yankee Doodle is here performed for the first time in its version with orchestra.

The adventurous Rembrandt Trio releases a third album on which they collaborate with an Iranian musician; this time they push their musical boundaries with vocalist Mohammad Motamedi. Born out of a special friendship, improvisation is the guiding principle. Motamedi, a celebrated singer in Iran, is a masterful improviser and has a head full of Iranian poetry - he gets inspired by the mood of the music and then chooses a poem to improvise freely over it. This album contains pieces that fit the more spiritual, traditional Persian repertoire, with texts by Hafez and others, as well as a number of more worldly songs on which the trio is joined by violin, cello and clarinet.

Recorded in hi-res audio in a former church, the tracks have a crisp and lifelike quality. Motamedi’s unrivaled vocals are matched with rare instrumentation; Rembrandt Frerichs plays old church organs and antique fortepianos, Planjer a whisperkit and Overwater a violone. The collaboration between the Rembrandt Trio and Motamedi becomes an adventurous journey through the colorful Persian musical landscape, where musicians from different continents find a shared language in music and improvisation.

Perspectives is an a cappella ensemble comprising five singers who explore every kind of music, from the Renaissance to jazz and popular song. This release is a journey through emotions and sentiments, travelilng on a musical itinerary that begins in the Renaissance, enters Romantic territory with Schubert, then traverses the golden age of choral music in the Victorian age. (Outhere)

Nasa Na was formed in 1989 in Brussels. At De Kaai, all risks were not only permitted bur encouraged and a series of musicians experimented together to create a new kind of music. The group broke up in 1992 with three members forming AKA Moon. This release is the answer to cries, based on live recordings from 1991, a must have for all Nasa Na fans from the beginning. (Outhere)

The WAJD ensemble is made of five Syrian refugee musicians who recently arrived in Europe. Their repertoire is representative of oriental music from Turkey, Syria and Egypt and revolves around Suffi music from Aleppo. WAJD highlights musical pieces that are little known and rarely played, they are reinventing through improvisation, sung or played, rhymed or unrhymed. (Outhere)

The intrepid experimental jazz trio Aka Moon has represented an approach to jazz that has seen them collaborate with a multitude of artists from different backgrounds in their richly filled career. Their new collection ‘The Scarlatti Book’ is devoted to the music of Italian Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti. (Outhere)

Since 1992, the year Aka Moon was formed, a series of albums has marked the history of the legendary jazz trio, which this set of twenty albums now gives you a chance to relive. To discover or rediscover this unique music is a very special experience, an inexhaustible source of inspiration. The twentieth album in the box is a previously unreleased recording: Light Ship Trio. (Outhere)

NOW confirms this cohesion thanks to an ongoing counterpoint in which three mysteriously complementary worlds intertwine, revealing their own originalities and styles. The titles of the compositions evoke the themes of travel and the fascination of elsewhere, as well as an artistic and human commitment always in the forefront. (Outhere)

In addition to being one of Beethoven’s most emblematic works, the Piano Sonata no.32 op.111 (1821-22) is a manifesto of radical modernity. It begins the process of disintegration of sonata form, a formal pillar for any composer of the preceding century, and introduces in its second movement a new method of constructing the musical phrase, to such an extent that some commentators regard it as marking the first stirrings of jazz. The innovations it presented, particularly in the field of rhythm, left most of the composer’s contemporaries perplexed.

Here is an ideal space for the Aka Moon trio to occupy. It has called on three strong musical personalities for the occasion: the singer Fredy Massamba, who contributes his expressive power as an African storyteller; the rising star of the Portuguese accordion João Barradas, who adds a flavor of urban modernity with the added feature of playing both acoustic and electronic instruments; and the pianist Fabian Fiorini, a longstanding partner of the trio, who acts as the ‘mirror musician’ for Beethoven’s sonata. It is through this nexus of meanings with multiple resonances that Fabrizio Cassol approaches Beethoven’s sonata, synchronizing emotional spaces that rise above periods, cultures and social or aesthetic viewpoints.

Aka Balkan Moon and AlefBa are two projects, the core of which is the Aka Moon jazz trio. • The Aka Balkan Moon project draws its inspiration from the Balkan gypsy tradition. • With assistance from a pair of fellow musicians, the trio went in search of musical fellow travelers, finding four virtuoso Bulgarian musicians. • The result is a unique contemporary jazz and traditional folk music blend. • The AlefBa project brought together 12 artists, half from Europe, half from Syria, Egypt and Lebanon, to create what could be called a Musical and Poetic Suite in Arabic Languages.

The question of the quality of joy seems to me today to be increasingly vital — it is intrinsically linked to the way in which humor can find its full expression in a world that constantly limits access to lighter moods. (Fabrizio Cassol) The secret of Aka Moon's longevity lies in their unceasing explorations of both melody and rhythm, and in the expansion of their knowledge and horizons through their encounters with musical cultures from all over the world. At a time when travel and concerts were no longer possible, Fabrizio embarked on an inner exploration in search of the fragmented memories of all his past musical experiences. It was subtle work, focused on the emotions linked to these intonations and then on the paths and the melodic and harmonic doors that they opened. The instrumental line-up includes a permanent base of harmonic instruments in addition to the trio of accordion, guitars, cello) as well as guests (trumpet, voice, brass ensemble) on some tracks. The music is accessible, shareable, lyrical and melodic.

Ensemble Perspectives, an a cappella vocal quintet founded and directed by Geoffroy Heurard, creates programmes that blend the mainstream classical repertory with lesser-known composers and folk and pop songs. These pieces are sung in transcriptions ‘tailor-made’ for Perspectives, which works with world-renowned arrangers and composers of all aesthetic persuasions. The group’s new album, entitled Playlist, allows today’s ears to grasp the timeless threads that link Purcell to Brahms, a traditional song to an American song crooned by entire generations. A playful and inspired journey through the music of Purcell (Dido’s Lament), Brahms, Ravel and Fauré, traditional songs such as Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and Frère Jacques, and songs by Charlie Chaplin (Smile), Michel Legrand (La Chanson de Maxence), Paul Simon (Mrs. Robinson and 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover) and Tom Waits (Alice).

Strange Fruit is aproject of the protean composer-saxophonist Fabrizio Cassol, which takes the form of a concept album that could be described as "world opera". This songbook was elaborated over a period of more than four years, in the company of a group of renowned singers who wrote or co-wrote each piece in their own, very different expressive and stylistic traditions. The title, Strange Fruit, refers to the song of the same name, majestically embodied by Billie Holiday, which remains an essential musical masterpiece as well as a humanistic symbol. On the album we find an inspired version of the original, dating from before "Lady Day" along with another, a sort of colorful fresco inspired by her interpretation as well as by Bach chorales or Malian men's choruses, and accompanied by the heavenly voices of the forty girls of La Choraline. The association between Strange Fruit and Some Days, a poem by James Baldwin and a major piece of inner feeling, doubt and the possibility of a salutary catharsis, creates an axis, a "mirror of sense", around which are woven the other themes such as spirituality, passionate love, the call to gather and freedom, poverty, abandon, child neglect, dreams and self-questioning, celebration and respect for elders.

Very appropriately, Valentina Nafornita devotes half of her debut album released on Outhere to the composer who makes the highest vocal demands, with his incomparable dramatic complexity and inspired musical invention. Ever since she sang her first Papagena as a new ensemble member of the Vienna State Opera in the autumn of 2011, she has repeatedly enjoyed enormous success performing Mozart’s great female roles, which are so challenging in their diversity. The charismatic Moldovan soprano impresses with an astonishingly wide palette of expression and emotion. The second part of the CD is devoted to the Slavonic repertory. With her rich, bronze timbre, she is ideally suited to the tragic depth of expression of Dvorák’s ‘Song to the Moon’, with which she made her breakthrough at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition, and to Tchaikovsky, whose Iolanta she sang at the Opéra de Paris in May 2019. The recording ends with a song dedicated to Valentina by the Moldovan composer Eugen Doga, recounting the life story of this singer who has been known as ‘The Nightingale’ in her homeland since she was five years old.

I Silenti is the poetic expression of those who are silenced, the voiceless, of what has disappeared over time, of the blank pages of unwritten letters. It becomes a catalyst towards other ends: those of comfort, healing, regeneration and beauty. The project is conceived around the Gypsy jazz singer and multi-instrumentalist Tcha Limberger. He embodies a musical and literary nomadism that extends into the geographical and timeless depths of orality. The fact that he has been blind from birth has protected him from the superfluity of appearances, so that he has always remained connected to the essential; from his prodigious voice, the most intense songs emerge; from his violin, the most moving melodies resonate. Beyond his universality, he is naturally at one with his people, the Roma. His sublime gift and his blindness are perhaps not unrelated to the trauma that his people have experienced, the ‘forgotten Holocaust’ that sealed their words with the convention of silence. Echoing this repertory, Monteverdi’s madrigals were the first vocal works to express human emotions with their dramas, passions and joys. The music is rooted in the words and their meaning; from the very heart of these polyphonic pieces, Monteverdi created the opera as a new genre.

Mozart’s Requiem is one of the most iconic works in the history of western music. After exploring its labyrinth of secrets in several years of research, Fabrizio Cassol wanted to reframe the mournful ritual of the Requiem to express other emotions as well – such as joyfulness – transcended by music and dancing. He confided his wish to Alain Platel, who was immediately fired by the idea. The choice of musicians was key: the ensemble is made up of six singers, three likembes, accordion, guitar, bass, euphonium and percussion. The basic narrative and formal scheme of the original Requiem is retained: recognizable fragments from it are quoted in almost all the sections. Joy and intense exultation, the power of the ‘groove’ and profound incantations all meet and intermingle with polyphony from many different sources. Five African languages intertwine with the ancient Latin text, and invocations to the ancestors ring out, creating a unique journey towards the hereafter – a journey open to the reality of the world today.

The present release is a wonderful concert by Mohammad Rezâ Shadjariân, master of Persian classical singing, both composer and performer at the same time: inspired improvisation, poems chosen with great taste, subtle instrumental accompaniment. Traditional Iranian music is a message, a call from the artist's inmost consciousness, which is tightly linked to his age-old history and culture. Poetry is regarded so highly by Iranians that music is often accompanied by sung poems (by Ferdowsi, Mowlavi, Saadi, Hâfez, Bâbâ Taher, Khayam etc.). The technique of Persian singing is very complex, and while it is of great subtlety, it demands great physical force and support –The singer improvises ornaments and vocalizations in a form of singing, free and arhythmic, the beauty of which depends on his sensitivity, mood, and enthusiasm and depth of the performance.