What a treat to have a first solo album from Philippe Pierlot, the Belgian viola da gamba player best known for being the director of the Ricercar Ensemble, and what a double treat for it then to sound so absolutely ravishing. In programming terms alone, “Meditation” is a joy for its combination of variety and musicological storytelling. A charting of the viola da gamba’s time in the sun via the music of its finest exponents, it opens with a selection of airs from Tobias Hume’s (1579-1645) The First Part of Ayres of 1605, which was the first complete collection of pieces for solo viola da gamba to be published on British shores. From there it’s a hop over the Channel to celebrate the instrument’s heyday in France. First for a handful of sarabandes and courantes, plus a chaconne, from Monsieur de Sainte Colombe (1640-1700). Then Les Voix humaines by Marin Marais (1656-1728), before returning to British shores for a few pieces by Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787), whose love for the fast-becoming-unfashionable viol saw him adapt his own pre-Classical style to something closer to that of his family friend and onetime teacher Johann Sebastian Bach. Pierlot then winds things up with his own transcriptions of two German works – the Prélude, Sarabande and Menuet from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, and a Meditation for harpsichord piece that Johann Jakob Froberger wrote on a trip to Paris in 1660. Recorded in Santa Maria di Micciano, the performances themselves have been captured with vibrant-toned intimacy, and a nice amount of church acoustic in the mix; and while there’s audible breathing, I’m inclined to think that it’s worth it for the pleasure of being really able to appreciate the timbres of hair catching – and of subtle mid-bow modulations in weight and attack – on gut string. Pierlot’s Thomas Allred 1635 viola da gamba meanwhile fully lives up to the viola da gamba’s ‘ambassador’ nickname with its mahogany’s sweetness, and Pierlot’s actual playing is as beguiling in the rhythmic rise and fall of an up-tempo Sarabande as in his programme’s many slower-spun lyrical moments. As for the album title, this refers to the programme’s first and last pieces, which serve as an ear-pricking way to finish by coming full circle, while having moved to an altogether different and more exotic place in stylistic and harmonic terms. Don’t leave too soon either, because as the Froberger’s final chord dies away there’s an inspired postscript in the form of far-off church bell chimes. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

Download not available

In November 2014, the Alice of Lewis Carroll crossed paths with Ibrahim Maalouf and Oxmo Puccino! Their meeting gave birth to a superb concept album, 'In the land of Alice ...' guided by the magic of the trumpeter and the might of the rapper's lyrical prowess. With the addition of the orchestra and choirs, both artists were building the backbone of a modern and multicultural opera. An ambitious project, full of good humour, freedom... a new complete work that has been discovered within a classic. © CM / Qobuz

Gilbert Rowland is one of Europe’s most senior and accomplished exponents of the harpsichord. Following his critically acclaimed 6-album series of the Harpsichord Suites of Haendel for Divine Art, he moved to the Athene imprint which now specializes in baroque music and "period" instruments for his well-received album of Suites by Johann Mattheson and his first volume of Froberger’s Suites. This album is the second volume in a projected complete survey of the Harpsichord Suites by Johann Jakob Froberger, whose organ and harpsichord music is individual in nature and ground breaking – he was one of the first composers to settle the "dance-movement" style of "Suite" taken up by Couperin, Bach, and Haendel among many others. There are twelve Suites in this collection. Gilbert Rowland plays a 2-manual French style harpsichord made by Andrew Wooderson after an instrument by Goemans (Paris, 1750). © Athene

The prevailing wisdom about late Romantic French music is that it is inferior to the German model; a ridiculous notion, but it has proven very powerful in the way such music is received and evaluated over the course of musical history. One of the finest, most well-rounded talents to be found in French music during the transitional period between romanticism and early modernism is Gabriel Pierné, whose work begins in a post-Franckian idiom, picks up some elements along the way from impressionism, and, toward the end, adopts stylistic gestures from Stravinsky and the tart, pithy neo-Classicism of Les Six. However, in terms of formal development models and overall mood, all of Pierné's work remains faithful in its essentials to his initial contact with César Franck and to the group of composers within Franck's sphere of influence -- Tournemire, Duparc, Chausson, and Silvio Lazzari among them. The Belgian label Timpani is surveying the practically forgotten chamber output of Pierné, of which this, Gabriel Pierné: La Musique de Chambre, Vol. 2, is the second entry. Pierné's music is performed by members of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg under the general direction of pianist Christian Ivaldi. Pierné's single-movement Cello Sonata (1922) is like a chat with a brilliant conversationalist, moving forward in a sort of logic of its own but diverging from the path here and there. It is flanked by two cello pieces from the 1880s, and these are so similar to the solo sonata in feeling that one is surprised to discover that not all of these pieces are cut from the same cloth. The Trio for violin, cello and piano, Op. 45 (1920-1921), is an unquestionable masterwork, romantic in style but tinged with just enough impressionistic flair to make it stand out from purely romantic works of its kind. It is a very long Trio, lasting 41 minutes all told; the first movement alone runs 20 minutes and has some extraordinarily sustained passages of suspended harmony that keeps the listener on the edge of their seat. The second disc is made up of shorter pieces, most from the last years of Pierné's life. Special guests the Quatuor de saxophones de Luxembourg turn in a bracing reading of Pierné's Introduction et variations sur un theme populaire, written for legendary saxophonist Marcel Mule, which runs in its eight minutes from a deeply affecting slow section to peppy and invigorating finale -- it certainly could have run longer. Pierné's music did not contribute to the innovations of his time, but it certainly was never reactionary and he preferred to reflect the developments around him; the Impromptu-Caprice for harp could easily be mistaken for an early work of Gabriel Fauré, whereas the Introduction et variations sur un theme populaire is reminiscent of Darius Milhaud. Pierné's scoring is very generous and instrument-friendly, and although some of these pieces have appeared on recording before, they have never been performed with such dedication as they are here. If you like Debussy, Fauré, or other composers of the French school of the fin de siècle, then chances are you will also like Timpani's Gabriel Pierné: La Musique de Chambre, Vol. 2, down to its amusing choice of cover illustration. © TiVo

As a specialist in the music of Alessandro Scarlatti (please do take note: Alessandro, not his son Domenico!), Marcello Di Lisa has made many recordings that have been acclaimed internationally. Now he turns to Alessandro’s oeuvre for keyboard instruments, which, in the elder Scarlatti’s case, primarily means toccatas. His works of this genre are distinguished by the demonstration of virtuosity that is brilliantly bizarre and in part unpredictable. One typical stylistic element consists of sixteenth sequences continuing on their course like a perpetuum mobile. While Di Lisa was planning the present recording, he resolved to present Scarlatti as a great master of counterpoint and thus to pay tribute to an aspect constituting the core of this composer’s personality. At the same time, Di Lisa sought out lesser known, more unusual traits conveying a more comprehensive, more multifaceted, and more versatile picture of Scarlatti – the picture of a man who was not only the sublime guardian of the Neapolitan tradition but also a composer who had a fine feel for melodic charms and took delight in surprising, unconventional innovations. And, what is more, the picture of a musician who made carefully calculated virtuosity his hallmark – or, in other words, knew how to combine imagination and intelligence. © CPO

Download not available

A fascinating juxtaposition - the seven early toccatas of Johann Sebastian Bach are interleaved with the 6th of Peter Seabourne's nine Steps cycles, the concept of renowned Bach player, Konstantin Lifschitz. Far from the Romantic toccata style, these canvases are multi-sectional kaleidoscopes of texture and tempi - each a miniature world encompassing virtuosity, intimacy and narrative. In the masterly hands of Lifschitz the result is a monumental journey of extraordinary invention. © Willowhayne Records