Robert Ballard was one of the most famous lutenist-composers of the first decades of the seventeenth century, during which the lute was the favored instrument of the Parisian aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie. Richard Kalb loves this literature, and it clearly shows in these loving performances. Richard Kolb has performed throughout North America and Europe as a soloist and with a wide variety of Baroque and Renaissance ensembles. He was principal lutenist of the Carmel Bach Festival for eight years, and has performed frequently with Opera Atelier, New York City Opera, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Chicago Opera Theater, Waverly Consort, Handel & Haydn Society, Pegasus, and Concert Royal. He completed a Ph.D. in musicology at Case-Western Reserve University in 2010, and has published widely used editions of music by Barbara Strozzi and Antonio Francesco Tenaglia. Kolb teaches harmony and continuo, and serves as scholar in residence for the NY Continuo Collective, whose fall project in 2015 featured performances of works by Strozzi using his editions and scholarship.
Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, SONY Opera and Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought after recordings by the world's preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.
The third volume of the Musical portraits series is dedicated to André-Modeste Grétry (1741-1813).
This 5CD box set includes highlights of several operas (La caravane du Caire, L'amant jaloux, Le jugement de Midas), his Six Quartets, op. 3 (Paris, 1773) and some partial adaptations of his operas (by Mozart and Franck, among others).
These works demonstrate Grétry‘s fine melodic sensibility, harmonic panache and accomplished artistry.
Baroque harpsichordist, chamber musician and professor of music at University of Illinois School of Music, Charlotte Mattax Moersch's 5th release takes us into Jean Henry D'Anglebert's Pieces de Clavecin (Pieces for Keyboard) composed in 1689. While D'Anglebert may not be as well known today as some of his Baroque brethren, in his day he was considered amongst the more notable composers of the harpsichord and Moersch's playing reveals why.
The Complete French Columbia Recordings (1928 - 1939)
APR
CD
$37.99Nov 01, 2019
Robert Casadesus (1899-1972) is today almost considered an American pianist - he based himself there from the Second World War onwards and he is known today through the huge number of recordings he made for US Columbia from 1940 until his death, but as a musician and pianist he was French to the core. He had studied at the Paris conservatoire with Isidor Philipp and Louis Diémer and his combination of immaculate technique, a light and brilliant touch and the refined elegance of his interpretations reveal why he was considered one of the greatest French pianists of the century. Casadesus began his recording career for French Columbia in 1928 and all his recordings for that label, until he left for the USA, are included here for the first time. Particularly noteworthy is a previously unpublished studio recording of Mozart's 'Coronation' concerto. He excelled in Mozart and Chopin and in French repertoire and all are well-represented in this collection. There are also noteworthy chamber collaborations in the Debussy cello sonata and Fauré Piano Quartet.
In 1791, in a suburb of Vienna, Mozart created his Singspiel Die Zauberflöte. The libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, who also directed it in his theatre, wanted to reach out to the popular audience in German. Thanks to the dramatic and dreamlike qualities of the work, and Mozart's brilliant music, it exceeded one hundred performances in one year and it's success became universal. But in order to win over all audiences, it's trump card was to speak to the audience in their own language - and not in Italian like the court opera. This is what this production offers, in an entirely French version, staged by Cécile Roussat and Julien Lubek and conducted by Hervé Niquet with a sparkling team: Mozart's work suddenly takes on the tone of the Opéra-Comique à la française. And thus, to go it even more strength, we have now the Magic Flute in French!
Scarlatti: Sonaten pour le clavecin Vol 1 / Andreas Staier
Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
CD
$17.99Jun 05, 2008
Musical scholars like Ralph Kirkpatrick, whose classic book on Scarlatti is here quoted at length (though without acknowledging the source), are understandably fascinated by the inexhaustible diversity brought to basically binary-form movements by this Sicilian-descended, Neapolitan-born genius, who spent exactly half his life in the Iberian peninsula. For music lovers in general, however, the fascination lies in his enormous vitality, his demands for unprecedented keyboard virtuosity and his highly individual use of melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and instrumental Hispanicisms that demonstrate how far he had fallen under the spell of Spanish folk-music and folk life.
All these facets are zestfully displayed on this stimulating disc. Apart from genuine Spanish dances—the bulerias of Kk492, the peteneras of 502 and the Andalusian 519 which bubbles from minor to major—there are impressions of street processions (490, 491 with unmistakable sounds of trumpets, horns and drums, and a marching element in 518) and the exciting rattle of castanets or tambourines in the rapid note-reiterations of 141, 119 and 455, and Scarlatti's unique telescoped chords (490 and the even more dissonant 119). His unexpected modulations and side-stepping key-changes are to be heard in several sonatas, and his stamping basses in 502 and 517. And besides the hurtling arpeggios or broken-chord patterns (141, 454) and chains of trills (118, 501) there are the Scarlattian quirks such as the out-of-step octave unisons in 203 or the surprise changes of metre in 502. It is a pity we can't see Staier performing the vertiginous cross-hand leaps in the remarkable 108, as well as in 118 and the exuberant 119, but the sheer breakneck speed at which he plays 517, shooting off like an arrow from a bow, will leave listeners breathless.
He uses a harpsichord of German type with the G in alt called for in 454, 455 and 502, makes a few logically defensible registration changes in some sonatas, and adds occasional discreet ornamentation on repeats (which are fully observed except in five cases). This is a most enjoyable disc, which I would recommend very highly: there are many recordings of Scarlatti, but this is among the best.
Here's the beloved French pop singer (and movie star) in the last two years of the '40s, accompanied on most tracks by Bob Castella et ses Rhythms featuring wonderful guitarist Henri Crolla. He sings C'est Si Bon; Et Lat Fete Continue; Feuilles Mortes; Champion du Monde; Clementine, and more!
'No!' exclaims Nunciata, the stubborn Corsican grandmother, when she is begged to put an end to the vendetta between her family, the Fabiani, and their enemies, the Pietra Nera clan. Set against a backdrop of tragic deaths, voracious lust for vengeance and passionate love at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, this 'lyric drama' composed by Saint-Saens in 1906 was premiered at the Opera de Monte-Carlo and dedicated to Prince Albert I, who had commissioned it. Saint-Saens demonstrates here the full range of his style, interweaving Debussyan chords, melodic lines a la Massenet and aggressive rhythms worthy of Prokofiev. Above all, he displays a feel for the theatre eminently characteristic of French opera, and one can only imagine how successful this score would be if it found it's way back onto the stage. It was not without reason that after it's triumphant premiere in Monte Carlo, L'Ancetre was staged in several cities in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany, as well as Algiers (February 1911) and Cairo (February 1912), before two further performances in March 1915 in the theatre where it had come into existence.
For three decades Alexandre Tharaud and Jean-Guihen Queyras have shared their rich and rare musical friendship with harmonia mundi. From Marin Marais to Debussy and Berg via Schuber, this anniversary double-album brings together some of their finest recordings. For the occasion they have also recorded several new pieces, including the Britten Sonata, Faure's Elegie, and Weill's Youkali.
Louis Vierne will always be best remembered as one France’s most outstanding organ composers, but his piano works are part of a significant wider oeuvre and notable for their colourful and inspired inventiveness. Each of the Douze Préludes carries an evocative title in music filled with the pain and tumult of war and loss, while the epitaphs in Solitude were composed shortly after the deaths of Vierne’s brother and eldest son. Including recently published manuscripts, this is the second of two albums covering repertoire that deserves a place in the pantheon of French piano music.
In 1723, Marais published his final masterpiece: La Gamme (The Scale). At 67, he was covered in glory and had nothing left to prove, but took utter delight in giving himself over to the composition of these extraordinary pieces for violin, viola and harpsichord, a diabolical trio in his hands. In the form of a small opera, this collection places drama and action at the center of the music. Hearts capsize, feelings are expressed with excess, virtuosity reigns right up to the emblematic Sonnerie de Sainte Genevieve du Mont (The Bells of St. Genevieve), a true marvel which repeats the tones of three bells so as to become hypnotic... Yoko Kawakubo, Myriam Rignol and Julien Wolfs reign magnificently over this music, which casts the last glimmers of the Grand Siècle into the whirlwind reign of Louis XV.
It is now twenty years ago that Henri Ledroit left us. He had been one of the first artists to have faith in the grand enterprise that Ricercar launched in 1980; the recordings that we then took such great delight in making now enshrine priceless memories of him and his art. Henri Ledroit personified the both the joy of singing and the intelligent delivery of the text; these qualities, combined with his richly warm and yet so delicate and fragile voice, created his magic. This recording -- our 2009 catalogue is included with it -- is devoted in the main to repertoire that is indeed seldom performed: the cantatas and airs de cour by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. We are now proud to present it for re-release, accompanied by an introductory text by Catherine Cessac. The recording has been completed with several sacred compositions that were amongst Henri Ledroit's first recordings. This compilation also marks the re-release of the complete recordings made by this wonderful musician. This recording offers the listener the pleasure of rediscovering the unique moments of emotion that Henri Ledroit shared with such generosity with all who had the pleasure of hearing him. These same emotions are still alive today: those that he brought to us and those that we experienced as we listened to him.
The engineers can certainly take a bow for presenting a clean, warm sound from the copy of the Dulcken harpsichord used; there are some gritty roughnesses in Kk193 which may be only on my copy, but from the less pleasant, clangier timbre of the instrument in Kk52 (long and rambling, like an organ voluntary), this may have been recorded at a different session. A rousing hand, anyway, for Gustav Leonhardt. It's true that he's a bit jerky and impetuous in Kk3 (One with falling chromatic lines) and that his rubato in Kk185 may be thought rather much, but once settled into his stride he produces some splendid performances. TI would instance his vitality in the wittily unexpected Kkl84, the brilliant Kk239 (with its suggestion of castanets), his deliciously springheeled Kk209 and the exciting Kk191.
But your chief plaudits, please, for the composer, whose irrepressibly mercurial imagination is still insufficiently appreciated by dull commentators who woffle that this genius "never ventures from his binary-form scheme for any of his single-movement sonatas", though, it is reluctantly admitted, "he does evolve various modifications of the form". Like, I suppose, Kk227, which in fact has two entirely unrelated halves, one in 2/4 and the other in 3/8! (Presentation gets this wrong too, saying that there are "frequent changes of beat" in it.)
