Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is naturally an iconic work for Leonardo García Alarcón. The Argentinian conductor has performed and matured his interpretation of Monteverdi’s masterpiece throughout his life. Together with his group of soloists, the Namur Chamber Choir and the Cappella Mediterranea ensemble, he now presents his vision of L’Orfeo: Monteverdi’s opera is as much the apotheosis of the Renaissance as a testimony to the nascent Baroque style. This is what strikes us when we listen to this new recording, which so eloquently emphasizes the contrasts between sometimes nostalgic glances towards the past and the most innovative expressions of operatic language. The printed score, published two years after the premiere in Mantua in 1607, offers contrasts too: is it the snapshot of a specific performance or a ‘blueprint’ intended for future performers? In fact, it is both, and that is where we find the tricky questions that must be answered by those who open this precious document; Leonardo García Alarcón does so here in a manner at once respectful, inventive and theatrical.

The sonata concertata form is perfectly illustrated in these trios by Dietrich Buxtehude which, according to Peter Wollny constitute ‘a landmark in the history of the sonata’. They provide a better understanding of a composer who has owed his fame chiefly associated to his cantatas and organ works, and to the admiration of the young Johann Sebastian Bach, who walked 400 kilometres to hear him play. After recording Buxtehude’s first set of chamber sonatas (ALPHA367), the musicians of Arcangelo (Sophie Gent, Jonathan Manson, Thomas Dunford and Jonathan Cohen) now revive the pieces from the second collection, published in 1696. It shows the multiple European influences (Baltic, Italian, German, French) that flourished in Lübeck, the north German city where Buxtehude worked as organist of the Marienkirche, but also in Hamburg, where the music was type set.

After two volumes praised by the international press (Diapason d'Or, Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik etc.) the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich presents the third release in it's Tchaikovsky cycle, featuring the Sixth Symphony and Romeo and Juliet. A boxed set of the orchestra's complete Tchaikovsky recordings under Paavo Järvi is issued simultaneously. Tchaikovsky said he 'put his entire soul' into the Sixth Symphony. He admitted that his program was 'more subjective than ever' and that he 'often [...] wept copiously' while working on it. The overall atmosphere is created by the somber key of B minor and an obsessive sighing motif that recurs throughout the symphony. In Romeo and Juliet, Tchaikovsky focused on thematic areas, setting them to music in different ways: the peaceful, chorale-like gesture associated with Friar Lawrence in the introduction, the bitter struggle between the Capulet and Montague families, and the intoxicated love of Romeo and Juliet. The work ends with the return of a chorale of reconciliation and the transfiguration of the lovers.

This album celebrates a musical rapport that has lasted for twenty years and, above all, a true friendship: ‘We’re like two sisters, on stage and in life’, as Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta like to say. In parallel with their dazzling solo careers, they have frequently got together for concerts in trio or double concerto formation (like the one written for them by Francisco Coll, recently released on ALPHA580). But they have conceived their new recording for a rather rare combination, the violin- cello duo – with the aim of choosing pieces they found interesting either stylistically or for the way they use the instruments. The programme includes the Duo written by Zoltán Kodály in 1914, which was not premiered until 1924, two years after Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello, along with a few forays into the Baroque period (Leclair, Scarlatti, Bach) and, of course, works by twenty-first- century composers to whom the two soloists are very close: Jörg Widmann, Francisco Coll and Julien-François Zbinden are on the itinerary of this introspective journey into the generous world of two total artists.

‘Going all the way back to the Celts and the Druids, the term nemeton designates a place where forces and energies are crystallized, generally clearings where solemn or ritual actions were performed. The best-known nemeton is certainly Stonehenge. The architectural marvel of Chartres Cathedral is built on a nemeton. In composing this piece for solo percussion, I wanted to depict a “place” of this kind by means of sound. I’m utterly fascinated by the instrumentarium of this work, consisting chiefly of metal, wood and skin instruments that don’t have their own “specific” resonance. The trajectories between the different tones condition and define the energy charge, rather as if two beings, in the mad hope of an encounter, were rushing towards each other’, writes Matthias Pintscher as an introduction to one of the pieces in this monograph of works composed between 2000 and 2018: it also includes his violin concerto Mar’eh, the concerto for piano and ensemble Nur, Beyond for flute, Verzeichnete Spur, Lieder und Schneebilder, Celestial Object I & II and Occultation.

Until the end of the Ancien Régime, one of the main activities of composers – and one of their chief means of subsistence – was that of maître de chapelle or Kapellmeister, directing the music performed at religious services attended by the princely families who employed them. Although this mostly concerned ordinary occasions, sometimes even on a daily basis, such composers also had to provide music tailored for specific and sometimes unexpected events, such as a military victory that had to be celebrated by a Te Deum or, more sadly, the death of a sovereign. For this five-album set, Alpha Classics has assembled eight requiems, from Antoine de Févin’s Mass of the Dead for Anne of Brittany to Luigi Cherubini’s Mass for the return to France of the remains of Louis XVI.

Ever since that first angelic night, Christmas has been celebrated in song. In the baroque period, many composers such as Charpentier have composed original masterpieces based on simple folk tunes. Here in a special double album edition are baroque carols from the choir of La Maîtrise de Radio France, with Les Musiciens de Saint Julien, as well as the best-known French Christmas carols (Les anges dans nos campagnes, Venez divin messie...) from the Maîtrises of Radio France and Notre-Dame de Paris. The two internationally renowned children’s choirs combine to celebrate the Nativity and share with us these timeless songs.

Julien Chauvin and Le Concert de la Loge join Alpha and launch a new cycle devoted to Mozart. This project is a natural continuation of Julien Chauvin’s work of rediscovery focusing on the interpretation of the music of Haydn and his contemporaries in Paris in the late eighteenth century. The first recording assembles the majestic and grandiose Symphony no.41 in C major, known as the Jupiter, the Violin Concerto no.3 in G major and the Overture to Le nozze di Figaro. Julien Chauvin is, of course, the soloist in the violin concerto and, with his Concert de la Loge (which is no longer ‘Olympique’, since the French National Olympic Sports Committee forced the ensemble to amputate its name in 2016, despite the fact that it dates from...1782), they embark on a Mozartian marathon that promises to be electrifying!

Les Kapsber’girls, an ensemble of four singers and instrumentalists directed by the lutenist Albane Imbs, has already released its debut album (Che fai tù?, released on Muso) which received several awards. The group now joins Alpha for several recordings, starting with Vous avez dit Brunettes? – ‘brunettes’ being the name of the chansons that lovers crooned in each others’ ears by the Bassin d’Apollon or among the groves of the Petit Trianon at Versailles Palace, undeniably light in character yet powerfully authentic. Seventeenth-century France was home to a host of artists whose talent served the nobility and the bourgeoisie, who were extremely partial to these airs. Performing them as vocal solos or duets with lute or viol, Les Kapsber’girls bring back to life, more than three centuries later, these works published by Ballard & Fils, printers to the Sun King, alongside such little-known composers as Julie Pinel and Giuseppe Saggione.

In the Europe of the first half of the seventeenth century, instrumental music became a source of sonic and expressive experimentation. Influenced by vocal rhetoric, composers sought to replace words with a new musical language. The virtuosity of the instrumentalists developed, as did invention, improvisation and the search for surprising sonorities. Along with the organ or the harpsichord, the violin was the instrument of choice for experimenting with these new techniques. Italian and German composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Farina, Schmelzer, Mealli, Buxtehude, Biber, Pisendel and Bach vied with each other in imaginativeness... The violinist Chouchane Siranossian and the harpsichordist Leonardo García Alarcón – both loyal Alpha Classics artists – have chosen to explore this repertory, here including Bach’s sonatas BWV 1019, 1021 and 1023 among other pieces.

Specchio veneziano or the Venetian mirror – this programme compares and contrasts two composers from the city of the Doges: on the one hand the celebrated Vivaldi, on the other a virtual unknown, Giovanni Battista Reali, who was born there in 1681, three years after Vivaldi, and died in 1751, ten years after his illustrious colleague. A violinist himself, he composed trio sonatas, including a very spectacular Folia, which Théotime Langlois de Swarte, Sophie de Bardonnèche, Hanna Salzenstein and Justin Taylor juxtapose with Vivaldi’s Folia, alongside other highly virtuosic pieces, many of them complete rediscoveries, since half of this program has never been recorded before.

One of the New York Times' 5 Classical Albums to Hear Now!

Hypnos, God of Sleep . . . Simon-Pierre Bestion’s recordings are often inspired by his desire to recreate a ritual. His aim here was to recreate a Requiem service, ‘the ceremony that accompanies the passage of a human being into the hereafter, while supporting the feelings of all who witness it. Making use of all the freedom that this act of re-creation afforded me, I constructed this program without boundaries between repertories or different musical aesthetics – from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance to the twentieth century – selecting the works for their captivating musical material, their hypnotic and meditative dimension’. Intonations from Byzantine chant sit alongside guttural voices in Giacinto Scelsi and the English vocal style of John Tavener; Franco-Flemish Renaissance polyphony encounters the influences of eastern or western spiritual traditions present in the contemporary works.

Handel is one of Sandrine Piau’s cult composers, and everyone has vivid memories of her magnificent Alcina on DVD (ALPHA715): ‘Where once I portrayed light-hearted, pirouetting heroines, this new album offers a portrait of powerful, often wounded women.’. . . ‘Queens, sorceresses, sirens . . . we were attracted by the musical and emotional intensity of the hopes, disappointments and sufferings of these women, not forgetting the malice or cruelty that they also know how to deploy’, continues Jérôme Correas, the soprano’s longstanding musical partner and conductor of Les Paladins. With Almirena, Cleopatra and Alcina, Handel explores all the facets of these defeated heroines, whose boldly delineated characters live once more in Sandrine Piau’s passionate interpretation.

Includes arias from:

Lotario | Rinaldo | Giulio Cesare | Alcina | Amadigi di Gaula | O numi eterni

Plus movements from the Concerti grossi

REVIEW:

Sandrine Piau, not English and not even Italian, is arguably the greatest Handelian soprano of the day. She gets excellent support from the smooth historical performance group Les Paladins. She and director Jérôme Correas mesh beautifully. This all comes down to a magnificent artist at the top of her powers.

-- AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Johan Farjot’s music prolongs the inner resonances of David Tepfer’s beautiful poems, dealing with the frissons and sorrows of love. On the road to the eighty-eight temples of the Japanese island of Shikoku, the piano of Johan Farjot or David Kadouch, with the complicity of Geneviève Laurenceau on violin, Arnaud Thorette on viola and Mathilde Calderini on flute, opens out a kaleidoscope of emotions served by the magnificent voices of Sandrine Piau, Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Delphine Haidan, Ambroisine Bré, Jeanne Gérard, with a guest appearance by Rosemary Standley.

Johan Farjot explains: "This is a polyglot project that corresponds to my aesthetic standpoint, influenced by American music (the minimalists and Aaron Copland, whose soundscapes are there in the background). But my music still bears the imprint of the French school and I am at ease with that tonal heritage, now that the war between 'atonalism' and 'tonalism' is behind us."

The eleventh volume of the complete HAYDN2032 symphony cycle moves its focus to Paris: ‘Every day one perceives more clearly, and consequently admires more, the productions of this great genius, who, in every one of his works, knows so well how to draw rich and varied developments from a single subject’, wrote the Mercure de France in April 1788, adding that Haydn was ‘quite different from those sterile composers who constantly move from one idea to another . . .’. The symphonies presented here are no.2 (the first to be published in France), no.24 (the first to be performed there) and the so-called ‘Paris’ symphonies nos. 87 and 82 ‘L’Ours’, with its references to fairground atmosphere and its famous contredanse finale.

This is Lucile Boulanger’s first solo recital. The French gambist, universally praised for her natural and moving playing – BBC Music Magazine even described her as ‘the Jacqueline du Pré of the viola da gamba’ – juxtaposes Bach with Carl Friedrich Abel, a great master of the bass viol and a close friend of the Bach family. Although Johann Sebastian never wrote for solo viola da gamba, we know that he transcribed many of his works for other instruments. So Lucile Boulanger has chosen, for example, to transcribe three dances from the Sixth Suite, ‘because it sounds particularly good on the viol, being written for five-stringed cello (a step towards the six or seven strings of the viol?). It is in D, the viol key par excellence, and its style, already somewhat galant, is reminiscent of Abel… This album gives me the opportunity to showcase the viol as both a melodic instrument – with the grain of the bow, the fragility of tone – and a polyphonic one.’

This ten-album set celebrates the release of the first ten volumes of the HAYDN2032 series, which aims to record all 107 Haydn symphonies by the 300th anniversary of his birth in 2032. This highly ambitious project under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini is shared between two ensembles, Il Giardino Armonico and Kammerorchester Basel. Its first volumes have received the most prestigious awards, including the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d’Or, the ‘Choc’ de Classica of the year and the Preis der Deustchen Schallplattenkritik. Produced in collaboration with the Joseph Haydn Foundation in Basel, this series pays tribute to one of the key composers in the history of music, whose inventiveness and emotional richness are nevertheless underestimated all too often. Antonini places his enthusiasm and sense of colour at the service of this music, which he sees as ‘a kaleidoscope of human emotions’.

This recording provides an opportunity to discover a forgotten Baroque operatic treasure: a zarzuela, the key dramatic and musical genre of the Spanish Golden Age. Sumptuous choruses, poignant arias, and folksongs blend in a rich and spectacular narrative, whose music was falsely attributed to Antonio Literes before Sebastián Durón (1660-1716) was acknowledged as its composer in 2009! Another peculiarity of the work is that it is sung by seven sopranos, who are even given the roles of Apollo, Neptune and the monster Triton. Only the part of an old man, the seer Proteus, is assigned to a tenor. Ana Quintans in the title role, Isabelle Druet, Anthea Pichanick, Caroline Meng, and Cyril Auvity are among the cast of this colorful zarzuela, whose modern stage premiere in 2019 enjoyed great success.

Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater has enjoyed enormous fame ever since the eighteenth century – Jean-Jacques Rousseau called its first movement ‘the most perfect and touching that has ever come from the pen of any composer’. There were many arrangements of the work, by Bach among others. It was performed more than eighty times at the Concert Spirituel in Paris between 1753 and 1790, in multiple versions, probably also with the participation of a choir.

After consulting several manuscripts and editions held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Julien Chauvin has chosen to record it with soprano and mezzo soloists (the equivalent of the French dessus and bas-dessus) and a two-part children’s choir: ‘The choir can play a real role in the narration of so powerful and poignant a text’, he says. This recording teams two emblematic singers of the Alpha label with the excellent Maîtrise de Radio France, of which Adèle was a member as a girl. To complement the Neapolitan masterpiece, we have a ‘sacred’ symphony by Haydn, "La Passione," probably written for Good Friday and in the same key as the Stabat.

Franz Schubert’s masterpiece, his song cycle Winterreise (‘Winter Journey’), was written shortly before his death in 1828, at the age of only 31. On his winter journey, the singer wanders as a lost soul in harsh terrain, wracked by conflicting emotions, but consoled by his memories of kinder times. Benjamin Appl commented, Every time I perform it, Winterreise feels like a new and different journey, depending on my own mood, the atmosphere in the hall, and of course the shared creativity with the all-important pianist. For singers, Schubert’s wanderer is a lifetime companion, yet a daunting one as we confront all the great recordings and performances that are already out there. The challenge for every singer is not to be inhibited, but to find fresh ways of understanding and transmitting both words and music to their own generation. Somehow, in Winterreise, Schubert has made space for that potential.

As Benjamin Britten said: “Every time I come back to it, I am amazed not only by the extraordinary mastery of it, but by the renewal of the magic. Each time, the mystery remains.” Winterreise is Benjamin Appl’s first release for Alpha Classics as part of a multi-album deal. In this recording he is joined by long-time collaborator and pianist James Baillieu.

Nicolas Altstaedt presents here his version of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s monumental Cello Concerto, originally composed for Yo-Yo Ma, and given its Finnish premiere by the Franco-German cellist under the composer’s direction. In partnership with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, he reveals its full expressive dimension here: ‘The first movement opens with what, in my sketchbook, was called “Chaos to line”’, says Esa-Pekka Salonen. Chaos, a metaphorical comet, a rhythmic mantra with congas and bongos, a wild dance . . . Salonen goes on to say of the third movement: ‘I imagined the orchestra as some kind of gigantic lung, expanding and contracting first slowly, but accelerating to a point of mild hyperventilation which leads back to the dance-like material.’

The coupling is the famous ‘Duo Ravel’ (to give it the original title used at its premiere), which Nicolas Altstaedt and Pekka Kuusisto have been performing and refining ever since 2010, and which it was high time to record.

REVIEW:

After the “defining” opening of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto, the cello enters—soulful, almost tonal, and lyrical with long-lined modulations, as the orchestra holds the tonal-like center. In all three movements the orchestration reminds me of Ravel’s: delicate and transparent, whatever the size of the ensemble.

The second movement has a concave shape, with a strong cluttered opening from which the solo cello emerges, flowing to a mid-section dialogue with the alto flute, before bird-like twitters expand to a bed of seagull-like cries (are they string glissandos or electronic?) over growing strings and winds.

The music grows without a break into the kinetic, dance-like final movement. Salonen describes it as “lung music” that swells and exhales repeatedly, as light congas and bongos set the pace.

But what about the performers? I listened twice, and both times Altstaedt was so mesmerizing that I found it difficult to listen analytically. It’ll take more than a couple hearings for me to “own” the work, despite Altstaedt’s consuming magnetic draw. Slobodeniouk is his hand-in-glove partner. Each movement flows with integrity.

The exhilaration and esthetic pleasure Altsteadt and Kuusisto bring to Ravel's Duo Sonata as they respond is remarkable. The opening Allegro is flowing and lithe. In the tres vif scherzo, the duo grabs hold of the insane pulse; the “harmonic sound set” is somewhat like hearing The Rite of Spring for the first time...

Ravel had fears of the sonata “being assassinated by amateurs.” I’ve never heard it more alive than with Altsteadt-Kuusisto!

--Fanfare (Gil French)

This album celebrates dance music, from waltz to tango, from slow foxtrot to quickstep, from samba to jive. Seventy years of music rooted in the 1920s, assembled by the enthusiastic musicians of the Ludwig Orchestra, who have taken to playing them at festivals, alongside their usual programs devoted to Stravinsky or Schoenberg, to get the audience dancing – a phenomenal success story that now becomes an album, Dance with me!

For this project, the Ludwig musicians naturally turned to a partner dear to their hearts, Barbara Hannigan, with whom they recorded Crazy Girl Crazy (Alpha 293), which received a Grammy Award in 2018, in collaboration with composer-arranger Bill Elliott. The trio has reformed here: ‘I was thrilled to go back to this aspect of my musical roots, to reawaken special memories of singing and playing keyboards with a dance band in Nova Scotia’, says Barbara Hannigan. ‘Couples were smiling and dancing to tunes like Moonlight Serenade and In the Mood with a few polkas thrown in towards the end of the evening.’ The Canadian soprano performs four songs, including "I could have danced all night," "Moonlight Serenade," and Kurt Weill’s famous and moving "Youkali."

More musicians round out the guest-list for the party – the trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin-Vary and the Berlage Saxophone Quartet. Dance with me: an invitation to feel happy and light-hearted, quite an achievement these days . . .

REVIEW:

The tautness of the Ludwig Orchestra’s playing – augmented in four dances by the Berlage Saxophone Quartet – echoes that of the best bands of the big band era, and the arrangements are not only effective but cleverly detailed.

-- Gramophone

With these sonatas by C.P.E. Bach, François Lazarevitch continues the exploration of the jewels of the flute and recorder repertory he has embarked on with Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien or as a soloist with recordings of music by Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, and van Eyck. François Lazarevitch and Justin Taylor now bring their sensitivity and virtuosity to bear on the sonatas for flute and obbligato harpsichord of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach.

The majority of these works date from the years 1745-66, when he was in the service of the flute-playing King Frederick II. Two solos complete the program: the famous Sonata in A minor for unaccompanied flute and the Fantasia in F# minor for keyboard, which testifies to Emanuel’s improvisational artistry.

Situated at the epicenter of the Enlightenment era, Bach’s second son was the key figure of Empfindsamkeit (Sensibility), the movement that explored the deep and unfathomable stirrings of humanity and nature, countering the learned style of the early eighteenth-century masters with freedom of inspiration and hence emancipation of form. The artist now sought above all to express the impulses of the soul, displaying unexpected traits that sometimes verge on the bizarre.

The Orpheum Foundation, which has been supporting young musicians for over thirty years, has joined forces with Alpha Classics for a series of recordings devoted to Mozart’s concertos, regardless of instrument. The leading soloists of the young generation have been selected to appear under the artistic direction of Howard Griffiths, a renowned Mozart conductor, who considers that performing his music is like ‘looking in a mirror: you can hear if everything is in place, musicality, intonation, rhythm, phrasing’. These albums will reveal the great virtuosos of tomorrow and immortalize their success in this implacable test. The artists featured on this release include Stephen Waarts, Can Cakmur, and Ivo Dudler.

Shortlisted for the Gramophone Awards!

Following her triumphs on the stages of the Salzburg and Bayreuth festivals and at Covent Garden, Asmik Grigorian now belongs to the world’s vocal elite. She joins Alpha Classics for several projects and presents here her very first recital, devoted to one of her favorite composers, Sergei Rachmaninov. This album, titled Dissonance, assembles vocal works carefully chosen by the soprano for the contrasts they generate when grouped together: ‘Most of Rachmaninov’s songs really call for operatic power. In fact, he wrote mini-operas lasting a few minutes.’ While this album is called Dissonance, in reference to the ‘internal conflicts’ that punctuate these songs, the duo formed by the Lithuanian singer and her pianist compatriot Lukas Geniušas is one of total consonance!

"[Grigorian's] powers of expression are as fierce in front of the microphone as they are on the stage...Her tone at its fullest, all velvet-wrapped steel, gleams with enough edge to cut through anything a full-throttle Rachmaninov piano part can throw at it, and Geniušas does not give the impression of holding back[.] As a duet partner, he’s just soloistic enough, with an attentive ear for the detail of what Grigorian wants to achieve with the shape of a phrase.

"The program, in a sequence chosen by the performers, ranges from some of the Op. 4 songs Rachmaninov wrote as a student to his Op. 34. Some last barely 90 seconds, but here they still seem like a scene rather than merely a song – a panoramic view, not a snapshot. Grigorian and Genušias will make you wonder why you don’t hear them more often." -The Guardian

"There’s a palpable energy between the [performers] on this recording. [Grigorian] unfurls her otherworldly quality—what Barrie Kosky once called 'Planet Grigorian'—like a banner; [Geniušas] provides the breeze to hold it aloft. By no means are the songs on Dissonance calm or gentle, but Grigorian and Geniušas handle them lovingly." -Van Magazine