The musical culture that Josephine de Beauharnais (1763-1814), Empress of the French and Napoleon Bonaparte's wife, developed with her family and at court kept pace with fashion and even shaped the French musical taste of the period. Josephine organised weekly concerts at the Chateau de Malmaison, her preferred residence, that featured many of the most famous musicians in Paris and Europe. Informal musical soirees were also held on an almost daily basis. This recording presents excerpts from operas of the period transcribed for chamber performance, in which the most passionate emotions are expressed alongside nostalgic romances and alternate with instrumental works to recreate the spontaneity of a musical evening in Josephine's salon. This original project offers music lovers an immersion in a musical universe that is largely unknown to audiences today.

The term violoncello was particularly fluid in the early 18th century: it referred to a wide range of bowed stringed instruments of different sizes and shapes, generally with four or five strings; some of these instruments were held between the knees and others were supported by the arm. So when Bach's wife, Anna Magdalena, wrote Suites � Violoncello Solo senza Basso (Suites for Solo Cello without Bass) on the title page of her manuscript copy, we cannot be entirely sure what type of instrument she was referring to. It is said that Bach himself played both the violin and the viola exceptionally well, and it is quite possible that he originally composed the suites for his own use and played them on a violoncello piccolo held on the arm, using viola fingerings. It is, however, also possible that he composed these works for other virtuosi known to him, these including Gregor Christoph Eylenstein, concertmaster of the Weimar court orchestra, and the Leipzig violinist Carl Gotthelf Gerlach. While being excellent violinists, they were also known as experts on the cello and viola d'amore. These considerations-and the observation that certain suites seem particularly well suited to specific instruments-inspired Ronan Kernoa to record the six suites on six different instruments.

The Messa a quattro voci con Violoncelli, Fagotti, Basso, ed Organo is an example of a particular type of sacred music that emerged at the end of the 18th century at the Portuguese court, in which the bass instruments imitate a classical orchestral texture. The resulting instrumental ensemble - two cellos and two bassoons with solo lines, with the bass line assigned to double bass and organ - was to remain standard until the first quarter of the 19th century. A body of some thirty works, including masses, settings of psalms. The Te Deum, Vespers, and responsories is proof enough of the importance of this repertoire in Portuguese musical life in this period; there was nothing equivalent to this instrumentation in other European lands at that time. This, the first recording of a work from this uniquely Portuguese repertoire with obbligato cellos and bassoons, is also the first recording of a work by Antonio de Padua Puzzi.

Johann Sebastian Bach took the opportunity to enhance the previously mediocre inventory of string instruments in Leipzig's two main churches in 1729 by purchasing four violins, two violas and two cellos from the workshop of Johann Christian Hoffmann (Leipzig 1683-1750). Three of these eight instruments, two violins and a viola, are still owned by the Thomaskirche. They could only be admired in a display case for decades, but here they can be heard in a recording for the first time. The Art of Fugue is framed by Bach's first and last Leipzig chorale arrangements, recorded on the Hildebrandt organ in Stormthal near Leipzig, which Bach had examined and inaugurated. Hearing these emblematic works on instruments that the Cantor himself had played is an extraordinary experience that provides direct historical testimony to the sound world of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Rarely recorded on disc, Johann Sebastian Bach's concertos for three and four harpsichords illustrate the art of writing for keyboard and strings of which the composer was a pioneer. These emblematic works, characterised by a balance between strong themes and abundant internal energy, are performed by virtuoso harpsichordists from the new generation of Baroque musicians: Violaine Cochard, Olivier Fortin, Pierre Gallon, Jean-Luc Ho and, for the first time, the young Croatian harpsichordist Davor Krkljus, accompanied by the strings of Le Caravanserail under the direction of Bertrand Cuiller on harpsichord. The album also includes a previously unreleased transcription for four harpsichords of the famous Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, by Bertrand Cuiller.

Classical Music

Charles V was certainly the most powerful and charismatic of the Renaissance rulers. Exhausted and worn down by the challenges of imperial rule, he abdicated towards the end of his life and led a secluded existence in the monastery of Cuacos de Yuste in Castile under the motto 'Ecce elongavi fugiens et mansi in solitudine' ('I fled and remained in solitude'). The Utopia Ensemble seeks out the man behind the monarch and examines the duality of power and greatness as well as solitude. Pierre de Manchicourt - court composer to Charles's son and director of the famous Capilla Flamenca - could well have written his Requiem for one of the countless commemorations of Charles V. It radiates serenity and splendour and is juxtaposed here with chansons that moved the heart beneath Charles's imperial armour.

Classical Music

Johann Christoph Pepusch's Venus and Adonis premiered at London's Theatre Royal in 1715. Inspired by the operas of composers like Giovanni Battista Bononcini and Alessandro Scarlatti, it was the most substantial effort of the period to "reconcile Musick to the English Tongue." These works bristle with Italian virtuosity and dynamism and unlike most dramatic music of the time, Venus and Adonis makes ample use of dramatic recitative. A clar model for Handel's later works.

Classical Music

• A truly fascinating program from British lutenist Anthony Bailes, featuring the work of Vincenzo and Michelagnolo Galilei, father and younger brother of the famous Galileo. The elder Galilei taught both brothers to play the lute. Michelagnolo was a professional lutenist at the court of Maximillian of Bavaria. Michelagnolo’s Il primo libro d’intavolatura di liuto is a unique amalgam of forms encountered in no other publication of lute music.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

I dream of forever being able to build programmes and recordings, as I do here, out of a pure desire to play. These mischievous, naive desires for play and musical pleasure are the only things that drive me. In this new album devoted to J.S. Bach, I explore a wide variety of works, each telling it's own story, which could be arranged in different ways or listened to separately. The aim of this new album, my first solo work devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach, is simple but so important to me: to delight the ears and, may I hope, the heart, with a few pieces that I place in the pantheon of the Kantor and that have been with me for a long time, recorded here on a magnificent harpsichord by Philippe Humeau. And a new adventure with Ramee - an invaluable label if there ever was one - is just beginning! Bertrand Cuiller