The conductor Jérémie Rhorer is today regarded as one of the finest interpreters of the music of Mozart in general and his operas in particular. After conducting Die Entfu?hrung aus dem Serail at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2015, he performed it again at a memorable concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in September of that year with his orchestra, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie. It is this exceptional event, captured in a live recording conveying all the dramatic intensity of the opera, that we present today.

‘In Die Entfu?hrung, Mozart presents a completely unprecedented vision of the singspiel, with highly developed ensembles and musical continuity at a time when contemporary spectators were expecting the standard alternation between spoken and sung sections’, says Jérémie Rhorer in the interview that accompanies the discs. That musical dramaturgy lies at the centre of this interpretation, which is served by an outstandingly homogeneous cast.

This recording launches a series of recordings of concerts at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and a collaboration between Alpha Classics and Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, who will continue to place their excellence at the service of the great masterpieces of Mozart.

With the rise of Romanticism, the topics of opera changed from the mythological fantasy of Baroque operas to the fairytale fantasy which graced the French stage long before Romanticism reached other European nations. Initiated by the Palazzetto Bru Zane, this project is built like a universal fairytale, inspired by Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard, and others, as set to music by French composers of the Romantic period, alternating between famous composers such as Offenbach and Rossini and little known masters like Viardot, Silver, and Isouard. This imaginary opera was conceived and transcribed by Alexandre Dratwicki for piano quartet and two singers- a soprano and a mezzo, the roles of which are performed here by Jodie Devos and Caroline Meng.

After the success of the first fourteen reissues, which restored to the limelight some of the gems of the early music repertory in the catalogues of our labels, here are fourteen new titles to allow listeners to renew acquaintance with further treasures of the Renaissance and Baroque (and even a journey through time thanks to Raphaël Imbert’s album Bach Coltrane), performed by some of the leading interpreters of the genre; most of these discs won one or more awards on their first release. As with the first series, the artists have been asked to contribute to the booklets, in which, with a few years’ hindsight, they talk about their conception of the works and how they went about recording them. The photographers of the Magnum agency illustrate the covers of the series with their work; this time the common design element is the colour yellow.In addition to the 13 titles shown below, the album FIRENZE 161 by LE POEME HARMONIQUE, VINCENT DUMESTRE, will also be reissued.

Eric Montalbetti has had a long and fulfilling music career, though not necessarily in the field of composition. He is most known for his 18 year tenure as Artistic director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. However, he began composing as a young child and has continued throughout his whole life. Montalbetti writes of this project: “Today, I am most happy to see my scores taking life thanks to wonderful conductors and soloists, and to develop new composition projects for the future.” In this music one can hear all of our most varied emotions- energy, mourning, hope, love, rage, and gratitude. Notable works on this release include “Trois etudes pares Kandinsky” for piano, and “Esprit tendre,” for oboe, which is a tribute to Helen and Elliott Carter. These works are performed by some of the best soloists in the current French music scene.

After the success of the first fourteen reissues, which restored to the limelight some of the gems of the early music repertory in the catalogues of our labels, here are fourteen new titles to allow listeners to renew acquaintance with further treasures of the Renaissance and Baroque (and even a journey through time thanks to Raphaël Imbert’s album Bach Coltrane), performed by some of the leading interpreters of the genre; most of these discs won one or more awards on their first release. As with the first series, the artists have been asked to contribute to the booklets, in which, with a few years’ hindsight, they talk about their conception of the works and how they went about recording them. The photographers of the Magnum agency illustrate the covers of the series with their work; this time the common design element is the colour yellow.In addition to the 13 titles shown below, the album FIRENZE 161 by LE POEME HARMONIQUE, VINCENT DUMESTRE, will also be reissued.

"With this program of English music of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, I realized what is every musician’s dream: to record and share with others a repertory very close to my heart. It was in 2005, and it was my very first disc. The choice of what I was going to record was even more important than usual. It seemed to me that this was the music that I was most ready to present to the public, and that would represent me best – since, for a young performer, a disc is also a visiting card.

I discovered the music of the English virginalists at the age of fifteen, when I heard a concert by Pierre Hantaï on the radio. It was a revelation. I had no idea a musical world like that even existed. I immediately went to play some of these pieces to Pierre Hantaï himself. That was my first approach to this repertory on the keyboard. Then the process of familiarization with it – like the progress of a relationship that gradually becomes more intimate – took place over ten years or so, until 2004, when I began a long period of preparation for this recording. The King’s Hunt and the In Nomine by Bull, The Queen’s Alman by Byrd and the Dolorosa of Philips – which you might describe as constant companions of mine – formed the basis of the program. Then I played my way through the entire output of Byrd and Bull so as to build the rest of it around them. I absolutely wanted to record on the Martin Skowroneck virginal belonging to Skip Sempé. I was also lucky that Philippe Humeau had just finished his Ruckers double transposing harpsichord, a magnifi cent and rare instrument, which guided some of my choices. The English repertory is very extensive. It was a true pleasure to have to select pieces from so many marvels.

I decided on the title Pescodd Time after the recording was finished. It was the ideal title for this album: it speaks of time – ‘the pea-gathering season’ in Elizabethan English – and it encapsulates the poetry and mystery of the Virginalists."

- Bertrand Cuiller

A pillar of chamber music repertoire, Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, known as Death and the Maiden, was written in 1824 after Schubert suffered through a series of debilitating illnesses and realized that he was dying. It is the composer’s testament to death, and is named for the theme of the second movement which was taken from an 1817 publication of the same title. “With the wonderful Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra we are presently exploring Schubert’s quatuor ‘Death and the maiden.’ Of course we have to include Schubert’s earlier song with the same title on the poem of Matthias Claudius. This song belongs to the medieval tradition of the dance of death. Therefore we also play “Toden Tanz” (with poor me dancing), an ancient death dance written up by the German organ player August Norminger… we also play one of Dowland’s Pavans from “Seven Teares.” Add to this “Moro lasso”… In between we also refresh our ears with other unsettling works by modern composers…” (Patricia Kopatchinskaja)

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REVIEW:

This being Patricia Kopatchinskaja, this is not your run-of-the-mill disc of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. Instead, it’s a live recording led by the violinist of a concert in which the movements of Schubert’s string quartet – in Kopatchinskaja’s own string-orchestra version – are interspersed with other music to revealing effect. The quartet gets an energetic, edgy performance - sometimes nervy, occasionally playful. The whole makes for thought-provoking, refreshing listening – and what impresses most, as ever, is the sheer aliveness of Kopatchinskaja’s music-making.

– The Guardian (UK)

Alpha Classics continues its collaboration with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and presents a programme devoted to compositions by its conductor and artistic director, Matthias Pintscher. bereshit, ‘in a beginning’ in Hebrew, is a piece on the subject of divine creation. The architecture of the work refers to the idea of the growth of the elements out of nothingness to their finished state: the colours, the harmonies are therefore always redefined by what precedes and follows them. Songs from Solomon’s garden – still in a highly spiritual dimension – explores amorous passion through the shir ha shirim (Song of Songs). The poetic density of this text is underlined here, with the only repeated phrase of the work taking on a quasi-incantatory signification: ‘she-cholat ahava ani’ (for I am sick of love).

Le Balcon, founded in 2008, is an artistic collective that has made a name for itself with highly original creations (Eötvös, Boulez, Stockhausen, etc.) combining sonic and visual innovations. In this, the very first disc made by Le Balcon and its conductor Maxime Pascal, who recently won the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, the masterpiece of Berlioz is recomposed – or decomposed – by the young composer Arthur Lavandier and recorded in 3D sound!

Le Balcon takes a keen interest in technological issues related to sound reproduction, and here offers an original approach by superimposing three recording processes (transaural, binaural, 5.1), each dedicated to a specific medium: physical disc, web, video. The recording was made at the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique in Paris, in the very hall where the Symphonie fantastique was premiered in 1830. For the ‘March to the Scaffold’, Le Balcon, which has a very open-minded attitude to amateur music making, collaborated with a street band from Carcassonne, ‘Tonton à faim’! A final point worth noting: the bronze bells used in the "Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath" (300 and 600 kg) were cast specially for the recording by the Festival Berlioz at La Côte Saint-André.

This is the first release in a series that inaugurates a new type of partnership initiated by Alpha, which presents highly creative musical ensembles like Le Balcon while leaving them in total control of their project from A to Z, from production through to communication.

The young tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen, whose career is currently in full flower, appears as a guest soloist with today’s leading conductors of Baroque music. He has decided to devote his first solo album to a composer whom he interprets with elegance and contagious joy: Johann Sebastian Bach. The title ‘Erbarme dich’ naturally evokes for music lovers the celebrated alto aria from the St Matthew Passion; but it is also the incipit of a sorrowful, sensuous aria for tenor and flute from the Cantata BWV 55. In fact, a substantial corpus of cantatas written by the Kantor in Leipzig between 1724 and 1726 feature a close dialogue between tenor voice and flute. Bach excels in this art of discourse and enjoys underlining or contradicting the text by sketching with the flute lines full of exacerbated vocality. This art of interweaving voices attracted Reinoud Van Mechelen and the flautist Anna Besson, who have chosen, along with the organist and harpsichordist Benjamin Alard, to structure their programme around Bach arias featuring obbligato organ and traverso. This album marks the birth of the ensemble founded by Reinoud Van Mechelen, A Nocte Temporis, and the start of his collaboration with Alpha, which will extend over several years.

"Tremendous fun!", "Scintillating!", wrote the journalists of Diapason and Classica about the most recent recording of Olivier Fortin and his ensemble, devoted to the rarely heard Romanus Weichlein, which received every honor from the French musical press (Diapason d'Or, Choc de Classica, FFFF Telerama). This year, the Canadian harpsichordist and his loyal band have decided to record Telemann, the 250th anniversary of whose death will be commemorated in 2017. Two anonymous musicians from the city of Hamburg wrote in 1728 that "Handel composes music" but Telemann composes "music and affects". The overture-suites by Telemann presented on this recording are written in a "mimetic' style: Les Nations, the Concerto Polonois, La Bizarre and the Burlesque de Quixotte explore a vast range of subjects and, even more than all his other works, reveal a man of the theatre, widely read, curious a humorist and a shrewd observer of the physical and political world around him.

Jos Van Immerseel returns to chamber music and the accompaniment of young talents, two absolute priorities for him. In Chouchane Siranossian he has found a worthy partner, as gifted on the modern violin as she is on the Baroque instrument, a pupil of Tibor Varga, then of Zakhar Bron, as well as a disciple of Reinhard Goebel, whose first recording, on the Oehms label, attracted great attention (winning a ‘Diapason Découverte’). Here it is the Baroque violinist who engages in dialogue with the harpsichord of Jos Van Immerseel in a Franco-Italian program juxtaposing the music of the ‘Angel’ Leclair and the ‘Devil’ Locatelli, not forgetting Tartini’s famous ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata . . . Indeed, all this music is ‘devilishly’ difficult to play, but the Franco-Armenian violinist shows perfect mastery of it, combined with great inventiveness.

Myth, Sallust tells us, is the relation of ‘things that never happened, but always are’. Ever since the fourteenth century, music has drunk deep from the source of myths. When composers were not dealing with sacred history, with the great morality tales of Christ, they turned to myth as to a great art and a matchless repertory of exemplary stories.

Metamorfosi Trecento is a musical exploration of myths and of the polyphony of the late Middle Ages. The ancient myths, foremost among them Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and their medieval transpositions are extremely present in the repertory of the Ars Nova: Narcissus lost on a fatal voyage, the stories of Daphne’s dream, Philomela, the myth of Orpheus, Callisto . . . The lutenist Michele Pasotti and the singers and instrumentalists (fiddle, recorder, clavicymbalum, Gothic harp etc.) of the ensemble he founded in 2005, La Fonte Musica, bring these wondrous tales back to life with beauty and artistry.

Georg Philipp Telemann, one of the most prolific composers of the Baroque era. Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico have taken this opportunity to pay tribute to his eclecticism in a programme juxtaposing works that move constantly between French and Italian stylistic traditions. On this disc, Giovanni Antonini not only directs the ensemble, but also returns to the recorder, his own instrument of choice (as it was the composer’s), and performs the Suite in A minor, the Concerto in C major and the Concerto da camera in G minor. We will also discover a curiosity, a sonata for chalumeaux. This instrument of folk origins is comparable to the clarinet, and Telemann was the first composer to show an interest in it.

With the participation of: Tindaro Capuano, Enrico Onofri.

Following on from his critically acclaimed Lutoslawski programme, the conductor Krzysztof Urbanski pursues his collaboration with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester on Alpha. The New World Symphony is a work that has always fascinated Krzysztof Urbanski: "It was only when I studied Dvorák’s other symphonies that I came to understand the principal characteristic and strength of the Ninth: simplicity. I wanted to dig deeper, and so I examined the manuscript and parts used for the New York premiere. There I discovered things that changed my view of it, like the fact that the first four bars of the third movement shouldn’t be played on the repeat. That gives them a completely different meaning when they recur at the da capo . . . The coupling, the rare Hero’s Song, shows an entirely different side of Dvorák. The way he transforms the initial four-note motif to evoke so many varied feelings, from joy to tragedy, shows his immense compositional mastery."

The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Alpha extend their series of recordings of the Mozart operas conducted by Jérémie Rhorer. After Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which received excellent international reviews (including FFFF in Télérama), here now is La clemenza di Tito.

Gilles Macassar wrote in Télérama late in 2014 of ‘divinatory conducting, a cast close to the ideal . . . The last opera Mozart composed, long undervalued, closes the chapter of the Baroque and looks into the future, blazing a new trail that looks forward to the nineteenth century.’

That outstanding interpretation is now available in this two-CD set, featuring a high-powered cast – Kurt Streit (Tito), Karina Gauvin (Vitellia), Julie Fuchs (Servilia), Julie Boulianne (Annio), Robert Gleadow (Publio) and, in the role of Sextus, a singer who enjoyed triumphal acclaim from the audience at each performance: Kate Lindsey.

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Kurt Streit convincingly embodies both the Emperor’s innate goodness and his agonies over the conflicting duties of office. Julie Fuchs's exquisite shaping of Servilia’s ‘S’altro che lagrime’ — music poised between Zerlina’s ‘Vedrai carino’ and the Adagio of the Clarinet Concerto — makes this aria the true Mozartian moment of redemptive grace. While Rene Jacobs’s thrilling performance — too eccentric for some, I know — would still be my first choice, Rhorer’s is a vivid, dramatically compelling addition to the impressive Tito discography.

– Gramophone

The Faust Symphony undoubtedly constitutes one of the principal works of Liszt’s Weimar period, if not indeed his orchestral masterpiece. Liszt had become acquainted with Goethe’s poem Faust in 1830, in the French translation of Gérard de Nerval. He began composing the work in the 1840s, after a visit to the Goethe House in Weimar. Its first performance was arranged for September 1857, to mark the centenary of Grand Duke Carl August and the erection of a statue to Goethe and Schiller. On this occasion Liszt rounded the work off by adding a tenor solo and chorus at the end. The premiere took place on 5 September. This musical transposition of the poem is performed here by Orchester Wiener Akademie under Martin Haselböck, and follows their recording of Liszt’s transcriptions of works by Schubert, released in 2015 (Alpha 471). In parallel with this, the Viennese period-instrument orchestra is also continuing its Resound Beethoven project, the recording of the complete symphonies at the venues of their first performances.

The young American pianist Andrew Tyson has devised a new program to showcase his talents: two sonatas and a waltz by Scriabin coupled with Ravel’s Miroirs.

Andrew Tyson has chosen to associate two composers whose language seems to divide them, but who nevertheless have many things in common, notably their use of tonality, of certain unusual harmonies and of dissonance. Alexander Scriabin and Maurice Ravel also lived in the same city, at the same period, without ever meeting: Debussy, Ravel and the French musical elite of the period regarded their Russian colleagues as crude and uneducated. Yet when one listens to their music, even if their approach to the piano and to composition could hardly be more different, it is apparent that they use tone colors in the same way.

The fourth volume of the Haydn2032 project thrusts into the limelight one of the most important stock characters in the theatre of sounds and words, the Kapellmeister, and explores some glamorous and (in)glorious moments in the career of Maestro Haydn. It features three symphonies by the ‘Shakespeare of Music’ – one of which is even associated with an actual play. This bears the title ‘Sinfonia in C. per la commedia intitolata Il distratto’ (the name of the play soon became the symphony’s nickname) and consists of an overture, four entr’actes, and a finale to be played at the end of the performance. Also on this disc is a large-scale buffo scene by his colleague Cimarosa. Il maestro di cappella is a witty and ironic parody, in which a member of the ‘old school’ of musicians tries to improve the ensemble playing of his orchestra. To his chagrin, the players do react, but in extremely undisciplined fashion: they are distracted, make false entries and disagree musically...

The reserve collections of the Bibliothèque Royale of Brussels hold the sole printed copy of Telemann's Twelve Fantasies for solo flute...These fantasias considerably enrich the slender corpus of Baroque works for flute without bass, alongside two other gems, the Partita of J.S. Bach and the Sonata in A minor of C.P.E. Bach. A cycle for solo flute of this kind, arranged by tonalities and rising gradually from the key of A to that of G, is unique in the repertory...These fantasias, each with its own mood, are miniatures consisting of a succession of three or four movements in the same key. All of them have in common the concision, the formal brevity and the rapid alternation of their movements. Telemann plays on effects of contrast and surprise by switching between opposing characters and tempi. The open form of the fantasia offers teh composer an ideal field of freedom and expression for his inexhaustible imagination. A fervent champion of the reunion des gouts embracing German, Italian, French and Polish tastes, telemann covered all the genres, national styles and compositional idioms of his time. - Francois Lazarevitch

This album marks the third release in the collaboration between the Ensemble Intercontemporarin and Alpha. This time the musicians of the ensemble and their conductor, Matthias Pintscher focus on American music: Intégrales by Edgar Varèse, Music for Wind Instruments by John Cage, Instruments I for six instruments by Morton Feldman, Elliott Carter's Concerto for clarinet and ensemble, Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 for string quartet, Sean Shepherd's Blur, and David Fulmer's Within his bending sickle's compass come for solo horn and ensemble. More than ninety years of creativity and musical profusion at the heart of the global city that the Ensemble Intercontemporain celebrates today. This album is being released to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the EIC: forty years of discoveries and of promotion of contemporary music at the highest level of performance.

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REVIEW:

This excellent compilation — excellent in its musical choices and in its performance — is a marvelous balm to my ears. The two youngest composers demonstrate that at least some American music produced today challenges my expectations and proposes new possibilities for form, timbre, and harmony.

– American Record Guide

For several years now, the guitarist and lutenist Björn Colell and the Baroque violinist Georg Kallweit, Konzertmeister of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, have formed a noted duo called Ombra e Luce: "With only two musicians and two instruments, we aspire to a perfect rapport and a permanent dialogue. We have access to a rich repertory of original pieces from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries for violin and lute/theorbo: this was a widespread combination, essentially before 1700. We work a great deal on tone colours and nuances, spontaneity and improvisatory playing – a flexible and sensual interpretation of the works we perform, giving full value to chiaroscuro: ombra e luce! We are convinced that, played in this way, our “early music” can speak directly to the hearts even of listeners who are hearing it for the first time. This new recording, “Passagio”, is the result of our recent musical journeys. Setting out from Italy to go farther north, we have virtually and musically crossed the Alps with our instruments. The works on this recording shed a different light on the music of the courts of Modena, Bologna and Venice."

Waterfalls and cascades, gushing fountains, canals, pools, grottoes and lily ponds, miroirs d'eau calmly reflecting the light: the water displays at Versailles are as varied as the secrets of its groves. They express the genius of the landscape architect Le Nôtre, who wanted water features and sculptures to decorate and animate the gardens he designed. For thirty years, Versailles and its gardens were expressions of the king's power and of his tastes. Louis would go out walking in the park each day, building up his dream, and even before the palace was furnished, the layout of the walks and groves was a constant priority. At Versailles we find Apollo, the sun god, riding his chariot amidst the spray, Neptune, the god of water and the sea, unleashing a storm, Enceladus punished for challenging Jupiter, the king of the gods...ancient mythology is used to express the greatness of Louis XIV. And the visitor today has the extraordinary experience of following an itinerary, punctuated by 'water effects', that was chosen by the sovereign himself. Fouquet, the king's former minister of finance, who spent the last years of his life in prison, was unable to believe that water would ever reach Versailles: 'Comment étaient les grandes eaux à cette fête du roi?' (How were the grandes eaux at the king's celebration?), he asks disparagingly and with resentment in Paul Morand's novel of 1961. The king watned water to be everywhere, and it is still everywhere to this day. The Grandes Eaux - when all the fountains are working - was Louis XIV's dream. Accompanied by music that was heard at Versailles for two hundred years, the event reflects the celebrations of centuries past. Sometimes, on summer evenings, lights, laster systems and fireworks are used to make the magic of the gardens even more bewitching. Entertainments organized in the gardens by Château de Versailles Spectacles take into consideration the original intentions of the Sun King and his artists. The gardens have been extensively restored. The Latona Basin has recovered its original splendor in 2015, when the Bosquet du Théâtre d’Eau (the Water Theatre grove) is also brought back to life, in a reinterpretation by Louis Benech and Jean-Michel Othoniel. The magic is perpetuated!