After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue and Pink collections (a total of 56 reissues), which brought the pearls from the Baroque catalogues of the house labels back into the spotlight, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to rediscover more Baroque treasures and rarities. Like the last series, this fifth installment also opens up to the Classical (Mozart) or Renaissance (Dufay) repertories – recordings that are an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history. This series’ reissues are performed by the finest musicians in the field; most of these recordings received one or more awards on their first release. The albums come with proper booklets, including notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from many different backgrounds illustrate the covers of the series with their works: this time the main theme is the color white. The present album features Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccatas, BWV 910-916, performed by Blandine Rannou.

After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue and Pink collections (a total of 56 reissues), which brought the pearls from the Baroque catalogues of the house labels back into the spotlight, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to rediscover more Baroque treasures and rarities. Like the last series, this fifth installment also opens up to the Classical (Mozart) or Renaissance (Dufay) repertories - recordings that are an integral part of Alpha's identity and history. This series' reissues are performed by the finest musicians in the field; most of these recordings received one or more awards on their first release. The albums come with proper booklets, including notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from many different backgrounds illustrate the covers of the series with their works: this time the main theme is the color white. The present album features WA Mozart's Quintet for clarinet K 581 and Quartets K 380 and K 378 performed by Florent Heau and the Manfred Quartet.

After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue and Pink collections (a total of 56 reissues), which brought the pearls from the Baroque catalogues of the house labels back into the spotlight, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to rediscover more Baroque treasures and rarities. Like the last series, this fifth installment also opens up to the Classical (Mozart) or Renaissance (Dufay) repertories - recordings that are an integral part of Alpha's identity and history. This series' reissues are performed by the finest musicians in the field; most of these recordings received one or more awards on their first release. The albums come with proper booklets, including notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from many different backgrounds illustrate the covers of the series with their works: this time the main theme is the color white. The present album features Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Vespers for Saint Louis, performed by Les Chantres du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles and Olivier Schneebeli.

The young German baritone Konstantin Krimmel won the prestigious Preis des Deutschen Musikwettbewerbs in 2019, in addition to the Helmut Deutsch Prize. He joins Alpha for a number of recordings, starting with this programme of lieder conceived with his longstanding partner, the pianist Doriana Tchakarova. This lover of words, a particularly expressive performer in concert, wanted to 'tell a story' for his first album: he chose to record a selection of ballads, because 'they are genuine operas in just a few minutes... mini-sagas that permit great interpretative freedom'. Among the great poets present here are Schiller, Goethe and Heinrich Heine. As to the composers, alongside the indispensable Schubert and Schumann, this programme presents a great master of the genre, Carl Loewe, who wrote several hundred ballads: the works recorded here, inspired by Scots poems or Danish legends, are especially eloquent. There is also a chance to discover the much more rarely recorded Adolf Jensen, a great admirer of Wagner, whom he met in 1861: 'To translate Wagner's ideas of Beauty and Truth to smaller forms has been my aim in all my later compositions.'

Surely, no map could chart the fantastic voyage presented in this release. For while this odyssey takes us around a large part of the globe, via the music of Ireland and the British Isles, Germany, France, Spain and Italy, North Africa, Turkey, the Balkans, and Asia, it is largely an imaginary voyage, an interior journey made by the performers, inspired by their travel experiences and their passion for a geographical or temporal ‘elsewhere’. Music has the power of transporting us, in both senses; it can open the ear – and the mind – to other worlds, other cultures and customs; and it can exhilarate and transcend the senses. Here are recordings by iconic artists of the Alpha label such as le Poème Harmonique, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, and Cappella Mediterranea – all represented in this release.

Highlights include:

Traditional songs & dances of Naples, Ireland, The Balkans, The British Isles & North Africa on baroque instruments | Le poème harmonique plays music of French traditions | Cappella Mediterranea performs music from Spain, 16th-20th centuries | Doulce Mémoire performs music from the meeting points of Western and Middle Eastern cultures in the Renaissance | Andreas Staier leads performances of Bach cantatas

Past praise for previously released volumes included in this set:

Aux Marches du Palais / Le Poème Harmonique

The infectious La molièra qu’a nau escus, the rhythmic zest and mellow harmonies of the largely homophonic Le 31 du mois d’août, the pastoral delicacy of Réveillez-vous, belle endormie, are only a few of the standouts that required frequent use of the repeat button on my CD player. As for the 11 musicians who make up Le Poème Harmonique, they are vastly skilled, rhythmically disciplined, and theatrically vivid where required, as in the galvanizing a capella tarantelle, Sarremilhòque. (The music may be from France, but various patois are employed, as well.) This group is far from the “churchly” type that usually brings great delicacy and little passion to such music. One hopes we’ll hear more from them in the future.

-- Fanfare

After a first album devoted to Mozart quartets (awarded a ‘Choc de Classica’ and a ‘Diapason Découverte’), a second to French music (Debussy, Ravel and Chausson) and a third to two quartets by Schubert, nos.10 and 14 (the mythical Death and the Maiden), the group founded by Nicolas Van Kuijk returns to its first love by recording more Mozart. This recording is the second part of an eventual triptych that will contain the six string quartets dedicated to Haydn: no.14 in G major, K387, the first of them, was composed in 1782, when Mozart had just arrived on the Viennese musical scene; no.15 in D minor K421, the second, is the only one in the minor mode and was completed in 1783 while his wife Constanze was in labor – she related that the rising intervals of the second movement recalled her cries from the room next door as he composed.

A grasshopper, a milkmaid’s pail, a shepherd, a fox, a country mouse, a cobbler... These are just some of the diverse and varied characters from the famous Fables that Jacques Offenbach decided to set to music in 1842, some 150 years after they were written by Jean de La Fontaine. With their vivid texts featuring talking animals and stock characters, the Fables offered an allegorical and didactic way of alluding to the court and the mores of the time. Offenbach chose six of the 240 Fables of la Fontaine to set as mélodies. Here the conductor Jean-Pierre Haeck presents them in his own orchestration performed by the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen and the mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes, who excels in this repertory. To complete the programme, the singer performs numbers from Offenbach’s opéra-bouffe Boule-de-neige and the orchestra plays movements from the ballet Le Papillon, offering listeners a recording as refined as it is witty.

For more than a century, from the last Valois kings to the early years of the reign of Louis XIV, the air de cour was truly the emblematic genre of French secular music. The term bears witness to the influence on and transformation by worldly and literate circles of vocal genres of popular origin such as the vaudeville, combined with Italian influences (the villanella), based on the principles of a simple strophic musical setting that facilitated understanding of the poetic text. Three composers dominated the production of airs de cour in the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII, bringing the genre to it's peak: Pierre Guédron (1565-1620), Antoine Boesset (1587-1643) and Étienne Moulinié (1599-1676). To mark the twentieth anniversary of his ensemble, Vincent Dumestre has chosen to celebrate the air de cour by bringing together excerpts from his five recordings devoted to the genre. A book accompanies this double album, including an article written by Thomas Leconte of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, a rich array of illustrations and an article on the historical context by Alexandre Maral, Curator General at the Musée National du Château de Versailles.

The young mezzo-soprano Adele Charvet has joined Alpha for several upcoming projects. In 2017 she received the Prize of the Verbier Festival Academy. While she has already attracted attention in the opera house, Adele Charvet is also passionately interested in the song repertory. For her first album, she has devised a very personal programme, deriving in part from her musical partnership and friendship with the pianist Susan Manoff. Both of them have drawn on their New York childhoods: ‘Long Time Ago weaves together the threads of our lives’, says Susan. Adele continues: ‘The musical journey is immense, from the central repertory of American music – Barber, Copland, Ives – to cabaret songs (Heggie, Bolcom), with a detour by way of England: Britten, Vaughan Williams . . . For example, Jake Heggie’s Amor describes the journey across the city of a faux-naïf sex maniac. The police, the ice cream vendor, the gospel choir all shout “AMOR!” when they see him. Samuel Barber’s Solitary Hotel is like an Edward Hopper painting in music; Aaron Copland’s At the River invites pilgrims to the church meeting: “Yes, we’ll gather at the river”... The programme unfolds like a wheel, a cycle that traverses the cardinal points of a life.’

The winner of the very first Queen Elisabeth Competition for cellists in Brussels in 2017, Victor Julien-Laferrière also received the Victoire de la Musique Classique in 2018 in the category 'Soloist of the Year'. His chamber recordings with the pianist Adam Laloum have won numerous awards, including a Diapason d'Or of the Year in 2016. Victor Julien-Laferrière now joins Alpha Classics for several recordings. The French cellist, who studied successively with Roland Pidoux, Heinrich Schiff and Clemens Hagen, has decided to record two peaks of his instrument's repertory, the sonatas of Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich, alongside the pianist Jonas Vitaud, with whom he enjoys a close rapport. They have given this programme in concert together on many occasions. A rare piece by Russian composer Edison Denisov completes the album: the Variations on a Theme by Schubert, composed in 1986.

With this recording of chamber music composed by Beethoven at three key moments in his life, Alpha begins a collaboration with the WDR of Cologne and its various ensembles. Here a group of chamber musicians from the symphony orchestra presents the string quintets op.29 (1801) and op.104 (1817), thus linking Beethoven’s exuberant early period with that of the worry, discouragement and anguish caused by the conflict over custody of his nephew Karl. The album comes to a majestic conclusion with the Fugue, op.137 (1817).

The Orpheus myth was as important for the birth of opera in France as it had been in Italy. In 1684, Charpentier composed a work for three voices, Orphée descendant aux Enfers. With this piece, remarkable for its style and concision, he showed how well he had assimilated Carissimi’s art. It is a dramatic scene, similar to the ‘sacred histories’ of the Roman master. The text, by an unknown author, narrates Orpheus’ quest for his beloved in the Underworld. The hero’s haute-contre gives him an elegiac timbre – this was the vocal register in which Charpentier, himself a singer, excelled. In 1687 he created his second illustration of the myth, La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers. In its two acts can be discerned the outline of a possible complete opera – the manuscript has reached us shorn of the third act in which Orpheus would presumably have lost Eurydice before being devoured by the Maenads. While La Descente d’Orphée has already been recorded several times, the Orphée of 1684 is a rarity and a magnificent discovery. In these two roles that might have been written for him, Reinoud van Mechelen is at the peak of his artistry, while his ensemble A Nocte Temporis and Lionel Meunier’s group Vox Luminis blend in perfect symbiosis.

After a first recording of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations acclaimed by the critics (Diapason d'Or, BBC, Guardian, Le Monde) Filippo Gorini, a student of Alfred Brendel and winner of the first Prize and Audience Prize of the Bonn Beethoven Competition in 2015, pursues a fast-growing career. His concert appearances have drawn unanimous acclaim on many prestigious stages such as the Berlin Konzerthaus, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Munich Herkulessaal, Società del Quartetto di Milano and the Samsung Concert Hall in Seoul. Here he returns to Beethoven and tackles the perilous Sonata no.29, known as the 'Hammerklavier', which the composer himself said would pose a challenge for future generations, along with the Sonata no.32, which according to Thomas Mann represents the supreme accomplishment of and 'farewell' to sonata form.

The practice of composing for two keyboard instruments, very common in the illustrious Bach family, naturally achieved its apotheosis with Johann Sebastian, whose three concertos for two harpsichords are performed here by Olivier Fortin and Emmanuel Frankenberg with the Ensemble Masques. These works, particularly the concertos in C minor, are among the composer’s most admired. They suggest a conception of the concerto specific to Bach: rather than a dialogue between several individual entities, the piece presents a subtle intertwining of melodic lines and blurs the distinction between solo and tutti parts by making them respond to and quote each other, thus illustrating the principle of harmony dear to the composer. Finally, the recording on two harpsichords of the Prelude and Fugue BWV 552, originally composed for organ, is in keeping with the nineteenth-century tradition of transposing Bach’s works with the aim of giving their refined polyphony greater clarity.

Alpha continues to explore its catalogue and this year again offers a wide variety of combinations. After a box assembling the gems of the Baroque era (Masters of the Baroque - Alpha 372), the piano is now given pride of place. The box set Masters of the Piano brings together 10 albums in which great contemporary interpreters (Nelson Goerner, Alexander Lonquich, François-Frédéric Guy, Eric Le Sage, Edna Stern, Anna Vinnitskaya) retrace three centuries of creation on the piano, from Bach to Shostakovich, by way of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Debussy. The piano will also be at the heart of a 7-release box set devoted to Alexei Lubimov’s recordings. Fortepiano, piano, prepared piano . . . the Russian musician has distinguished himself in every repertoire. Finally, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven, the Beethoven Rediscovered box highlights 16 albums that offer a chance to rediscover his symphonies, concertos and sonatas on period instruments, the fortepiano, etc.

Erkki-Sven Tüür, born in Estonia in 1959, writes music that is characterized by intense energetic transformation. The intuitive and rational approach is synthesized into a complete organic system. He is the composer of nine symphonies, ten concertos, numerous chamber works and an opera. Dedicated to his compatriot Paavo Järvi and composed to mark the centenary of the Estonian Republic in 2018, Tüür’s Ninth Symphony is entitled Mythos. According to the composer, this refers to the myths that arise about nations and how they have acquired their independence, and also deals with the long history of the Finno-Ugric peoples. Paavo Järvi and his Estonian Festival Orchestra have made the world premiere recording of this work, along with The Incantation of Tempest (Ormiloits, 2004), dedicated to the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis, and Sow the Wind, composed in 2015, inspired by climatic ‘gusts of wind’ and ‘whirlwinds’.

The Orchester Wiener Akademie and it's conductor Martin Haselböck continue the Resound Beethoven series, performed on period instruments and scrupulously respecting the orchestral layouts of 200 years ago. Volume 8, the last volume of the series, is devoted to two emblematic works, both of them dedicated jointly to Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz and Count Andreas Kirillovich Razumovsky: Symphonies nos. 5 and 6. Each of these symphonies has a name attached to it. While the Fifth Symphony is sometimes called the 'Fate' Symphony for more or less determined reasons, Beethoven himself named the Sixth 'Pastoral', thus pursuing the venerable tradition of the musical pastorale while conferring a new dimension on it. The Orchester Wiener Akademie recorded these two works in the Landhaus Saal of the Niederösterreich Palais, Beethoven's favorite concert venue. Between 1819 and 1827, all his nine symphonies were performed there at the 'Concerts spirituels' founded by Franz Gebauer, and it was in this same palace that the Austrian Revolution of 1848 began.

The debut of the Taracea ensemble creates a bridge between past and present. The Madrid-based trio's artistic project is to combine early music, jazz and improvisation. It's founder Rainer Seiferth, a German musician who lives in Spain, plays the vihuela, the Spanish counterpart of the Renaissance lute. Belén Nieto is a flute and recorder specialist and a regular member of Jordi Savall's ensembles. The double bass player Miguel Rodrigañez is at home in jazz, flamenco and classical music. If there is a movement for 'new' early music, Michel Godard was one of it's founders: the French virtuoso of the serpent blends in perfectly with the group. Percussionist David Mayoral combines East and West on zarb, riq and darbuka. The young Spanish singer and percussionist Isabel Martín performs a song by the Spanish Renaissance composer Juan del Encina. This album is called 'Akoé' - 'Listening' in ancient Greek: each of the musicians brings his or her own sound and ideas and becomes an integral part of an inextricably interwoven texture.

The starting point for Barbara Hannigan’s third recording for Alpha is a work by Gérard Grisey (1946-98) that is particularly close to her heart. Grisey wrote: ‘I conceived the Quatre Chants pour franchir le seuil [Four songs for crossing the threshold] as a musical meditation on death in four parts: the death of the angel, the death of civilization, the death of the voice and the death of humanity... The texts chosen belong to four civilizations (Christian, Egyptian, Greek, Mesopotamian) and have in common a fragmentary discourse on the inevitability of death.’ Luigi Nono (1924-90) was a politically engaged composer. His stunning monody Djamila Boupacha, a heart-rending cry for solo soprano, pays tribute to a freedom fighter tortured by French paratroopers during the Algerian war; Picasso also portrayed her in charcoal. Once again Barbara Hannigan both sings and directs this pair of twentieth-century works with her friends of the Ludwig Orchestra. She has chosen to couple them with a Classical symphony by the master of the genre, Joseph Haydn, which also deals with the theme of the Passion. Her interpretation is extremely intense and highly personal.

Harmonieuses Dissonances: that is the title of the string quartet that closes this second album of music by Eric Montalbetti, but above all it is a statement of the very subject of the works assembled here: they start out from heterogeneous elements, like the diversity of the people we know, or of our moods and thoughts, and aim – through encounters, comparisons, organization or a search for common ground – to find the meaning of a life that we hope will, in the end, be harmonious. Since the first album of his music, Solos, appeared in 2016, Eric Montalbetti has been fortunate enough to hear seventeen of his scores come to life thanks to some wonderful musicians in France, Germany, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Japan and Korea. Two duos (including a Hommage a Matisse), a piano trio and a string quartet, were premiered and have now been recorded by Christian Tetzlaff and Alexandre Vorontsov, Delphine Haidan and Pierre Genisson, the soloists of the Ensemble intercontemporain and the Quatuor Les Dissonances.

Is the imitation of rolling thunder, howling winds and bleating sheep a form of musical composition worthy of the name? Can we take seriously a composer who boasts of being able to 'set a restaurant menu to music, if need be'? These were the kinds of questions that Richard Strauss, one of the most virtuosic composers of the so-called 'programme music', had to ask himself. His answer: 'I am a musician from head to toe; for me, all "programmes" are merely incentives to invent new forms, nothing else.' The NDR Orchestra, conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski, has chosen to devote it's sixth Alpha Classics recording to three of Richard Strauss's most famous symphonic poems: Also sprach Zarathustra op. 30, Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche op. 28 and Don Juan op. 20.

A leading authority on the fortepiano, Jos Van Immerseel has devised a programme focusing on the music Beethoven composed for a Viennese piano with a range of five octaves. This includes the finest keyboard music from Beethoven’s early Viennese period, more specifically works written between 1795 and 1804. For this recording, the Flemish pianist has used the composer’s extant autograph manuscripts or the first editions published shortly after composition, as well as the latest critical edition by Jonathan Del Mar (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 2017-18). The writings of Carl Czerny, one of Beethoven’s most important ‘pupils’, were also a significant source of information. With his customary attention to the instrumentarium, Jos Van Immerseel has opted for a five-octave Viennese grand fortepiano by Christopher Clarke, a masterly replica, built in 1988, of an instrument by Walter, whom Beethoven himself selected in 1802 from among the sixty or so Viennese piano makers of the time.

For his first release on Alpha, the clarinetist and conductor Jörg Widmann celebrates the music of a composer who wrote some of the finest pieces ever devoted to his instrument: Carl Maria von Weber. With the ensemble of which he is principal conductor, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, he has recorded the Clarinet Quintet (in its version with string ensemble) and the Concertino, composed in 1811 and 1815 respectively, along with the ever-popular Overture to Der Freischütz. The pianist Denis Kozhukhin joins Widmann to perform the Grand Duo concertant. This album is the first in a series of recordings that will also give us a chance to meet Jörg Widmann in his role as one of the most active composers of his generation.

This recording was made under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw in December 2019, two months before his death. A few weeks before that, he had called Thomas Dieltjens, artistic director of Het Collectief, to tell him: ‘Since our concert in mid-July 2019, ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ has constantly been on my mind. I am totally fascinated by it and discover new things in it every day. It would be a dream if we could record this music with the exceptional cast of musicians and soloist singers of the Saintes festival, and preferably the sooner the better.” Words failed, as can be gathered from the many concert reviews they received. Mahler’s ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ is already so much more than just music, it encompasses life as a whole, from early birth till death. Reinbert de Leeuw made of this masterpiece an exceptionally refined arrangement for 15 instrumentalists and 2 soloists. How Reinbert manages to render the full force of Mahler’s original score in his arrangement is unparalleled. There is the addition of the harp, some percussion, a contrabassoon and a bass clarinet. With the harmonium as an essential link between cords, winds, percussion and piano. One lacks ears to feel the richness of Reinbert’s arrangement. This is pure musical delight.

In the post-Renaissance period, the lamento established a place for itself in both vocal and instrumental music. This grief-stricken utterance in the face of death – one’s own imminent demise, that of a loved one, a lamentation that may be either sacred or secular. The present release from Café Zimmerman presents 9 lamentos from composers such as Bach, Bernhard, Biber, Schmelzer, and more. Founded in 1999, Café Zimmermann is one of the leading Baroque ensembles in France and in the rest of Europe. Led by violinist Pablo Valetti and harpsichordist Céline Frisch, the ensemble brings together soloists who are eager to bring back to life the artistic atmosphere conveyed by Gottfried Zimmermann’s establishment in 18th century Leipzig. Café Zimmermann collaborated with artists such as Emöke Barath, Giuliano Carmignola, Rupert Charlesworth, Lorenzo Coppola, Maarten Engeltjes, Damien Guillon, Kristina Hammarström, Christian Immler, Roberta Invernizzi, Sophie Karthäuser, Gustav Leonhardt, Lenneke Ruiten, Carolyn Sampson, Andreas Staier, Dominique Visse, as well as the choirs Les Elements, Aedes, Vox Luminis and Accentus.