The musical world owes a debt of gratitude to French conductor Christophe Rousset not only for the vital, exquisite performances he delivers with the ensembles Les Talens Lyriques and Choeur de Chambre de Namur, but for his work in bringing to light neglected masterpieces of Baroque opera. Lully's Bellérophon, premiered in 1679, was a huge success in its time, with an initial run of nine months. Part of its popularity was doubtless due to the parallels that could be drawn between its plot and certain recent exploits of Louis XV, but even the earliest critics recognized the score's uniqueness and exceptional quality within Lully's oeuvre, so it's perhaps surprising that it has never been recorded before. The distinctiveness of the music was likely a result at least in part of the fact that Lully's preferred librettist Philippe Quinault was out of favor at the court of Louis XV at the time, so the composer turned to Thomas Corneille for the libretto, and Corneille's literary and dramatic styles were so different from Quinault's that Lully was nudged out of his comfort zone and had to develop new solutions to questions of structure and the marrying of music to text. It is the first opera for which Lully composed fully accompanied recitatives, and that alone gives it a textural richness that surpasses his earlier works. The composer also allows soloists to sing together, something that was still a rarity in Baroque opera. There are several duets and larger ensembles; the love duet, "Que tout parle à l'envie de notre amour extreme!," is a ravishing expression of passion and happiness, as rhapsodic as anything in 19th century Italian opera. The level of musical inventiveness throughout is exceptional even for Lully; the expressiveness of the recitatives, the charm of the instrumental interludes, the originality of the choruses, and the limpid loveliness of the airs make this an opera that demands attention. Rousset and his forces give an outstanding performance that's exuberantly spirited, musically polished, rhythmically springy, and charged with dramatic urgency. The soloists are consistently of the highest order. Cyril Auvity brings a large, virile, passionate tenor to the title role and Céline Scheen is warmly lyrical as his lover Philonoë. Ingrid Perruche is fiercely powerful as the villain, Stéenobée, and Jean Teitgen is a secure, authoritative Apollo. Soloists, chorus, and orchestra are fluent in the subtle inflections of French middle Baroque ornamentation. The sound of the live recording is very fine, with a clean, immediate, realistic ambience. This is a release that fans of Baroque opera will not want to miss. Highly recommended. © TiVo

A young ensemble of instrumentalists and singers revives the precious historical practice of singers accompanying themselves (already brought back into currency by the soloist Vivabiancaluna Biffi), thus producing a wholly new sound in music usually assigned to unaccompanied voices. With Concerto di Margherita, self-accompanied singing becomes "collective" for the first time in our era, and is amplified in a shared gesture in which all the members of the group – playing and singing together with extraordinary coordination – produce a sonority unprecedented in this repertory. Created at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland, the group (which is named after the Duchess of Ferrara, Margherita Gonzaga) performs as a consort of five voices, theorbo, harp, viola da gamba, guitar and lutes, inspired by the "Concerto delle dame" of Ferrara. The recording debut of Concerto di Margherita presents arrangements of a wide range of instrumental and vocal works (madrigals, villanellas and canzonas), drawing on music by De Wert, Gastoldi, Monteverdi and the "blind man’s buff" scene from Giovanni Battista Guarini’s Il pastor fido (1580). © Arcana

Fauré's Requiem, “funeral lullaby” written for enjoyment as the composer put it, has a unique place in history. It's soft, simple and modest poetry conveys moments of gentle contemplation and moving expressiveness which are entrusted to both the choir and the two soloists. With his Ensemble Aedes and the orchestra Les Siècles, Mathieu Romano is committed to render a Requiem faithful to its first performance. We hear thus the score in its original 1893 orchestration, where the organ plays a great role, and where Latin is pronounced in the French way as it used to be. The clearest articulation of the Ensemble Aedes then perfectly fits Éluard’s Figure humaine set to music by Francis Poulenc. We have never heard these sublime poems sung with such intelligibility before! Finally, the three Songs by Debussy elegantly close the album. Here again, the quality and clarity of the voices are stunning. Artistic director and founder of Ensemble Aedes has established himself as a magician of voices in a cappella scores. And voices ideally melt with the strings of Les Siècles under his baton. A 100% French cast in a 100% French music disc for a triple rediscovery. Essential! © Aparté

The almost encyclopedic undertaking that French label harmonia mundi has embarked on to celebrate the double anniversary of the birth and death of Beethoven between 2020 and 2027 has already proven itself to be captivating with its emphasis on contemporary works from the start of the 19th century. It also presents us with a version of Beethoven in direct contact with the works of his own era, a step away from the usual romanticised image of the solitary genius in his ivory tower. The juxtaposition of the renowned ‘Pastoral’ Symphony with the Portrait musical de la nature ou Grande Simphonie is troubling to say the least. The latter was written by relatively unknown composer Justin Heinrich Knecht 25 years prior to Beethoven’s masterpiece (it was recorded in a world premiere in 1997 by Frieder Bernius but flew under the radar). The two composers having had the same editor, everything points to the fact that Beethoven was probably familiar with the work, and the similarities between the two are not unrecognisable. The result of a long tradition of pastoral musical works, divided into five movements, with very similar programme indications, Rousseauesque naïvety with regard to the melodic contours and imitations of bird calls all go to show the proximity of the two works. This is a thrilling interpretation thanks to the convincing performance by the Berlin Akademie für Alte Musik that puts the two works on a par together. © François Hudry/Qobuz

In the visual arts, anamorphosis is a technical term for a distorted image that changes appearance with an altered perspective, usually revealed through projection or as seen through a special lens. As used in the context of this 2019 release by Vincent Dumestre and Le Poème Harmonique, the word has a somewhat ambiguous musical meaning, suggesting the duality of sacred and secular characteristics that became a hallmark of early Baroque music. This metaphorical sense of anamorphosis is illustrated by the Miserere of Gregorio Allegri, which was originally composed as an austere homophonic setting of Psalm 50, as approved by the Catholic Church after the Council of Trent, but was reworked over time through elaborate embellishments and expressive dissonances that emphasized the emotional power of certain words. Another feature of anamorphosis in Baroque music was the use of operatic material adapted to the needs of the Counter-Reformation, which originated in the Renaissance parody masses, where popular songs were used side-by-side with Gregorian chants as cantus firmi. A later example of this is the contrafactum Pascha Concelebranda of Ambrosius Profe, which was based on a madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi. The double meanings behind these pieces may be hard for modern listeners to discern, though the passionate singing and vibrant instrumental accompaniment of Le Poème Harmonique go far to illuminate the mysteries of the program. Alpha recorded this disc at a studio in Baume-les-Messieurs, France, so the sound is close-up and clean, all the better to hear the plangent cross-relations and ornamented lines with immediacy and clarity.© TiVo

Fascinated by the folklore of his native Bohemia, and gifted with inexhaustible melodic inventiveness, Antonín Dvořák went through several creative periods as he gradually broke out of the Classical mould; the last of these was deeply influenced by the years he spent in the United States. His kindness and optimism set him apart from the other great Romantics, darker and more tormented in character, and contributed to the unique charm and accessible character of his music, which have earned him justified popularity. The Talich Quartet demonstrates con brio that it is vital for a string quartet to regenerate itself with the arrival of new members who share the same urge to enhance the radiant tradition of the great Czech quartet school. Thus Jan Talich Jr. perpetuates the tradition with a "new" Talich Quartet alongside the violinist Roman Patočka, the eminent former cellist of the Pražák Quartet, Michal Kaňka, and the violist Radim Sedmidubský, previously with the Škampa Quartet. The new line-up began giving concerts in 2021 and immediately won over audiences with the lightness of tone, spontaneous expression, unpredictable accents and innate feeling for folk elements so characteristic of the founding members. As the sole guardian of the group’s legendary discography, it was only natural for La Dolce Volta to invite the members of the Talich Quartet back to the studio to record this new album. © La Dolce Volta

The giant against whom all Italian composers were measured throughout the seventeenth century was Monteverdi, the absolute monarch of vocal music and, if not inventor, at least the genial promoter of new forms. Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, Zachary WIlder and I Gemelli have chosen to focus on the reflections of this tutelary figure, evoking the master rather than the citer. It was Monteverdi who “invented” the opera duet, and more precisely the tenor duet, in L’Orfeo (1609), representing the dialogue between Orpheus and Apollo in a virtuosic and symbiotic style: the voices entwine in a profusion of melisma in which it is difficult to distinguish which of the two gods is the father and which the son. The technique was further developed in the seventh book of madrigals by that same Monteverdi, a genuine laboratory of modern music. It was therefore quite natural for the Ensemble I Gemelli to produce a recital based on twinned voices, and particularly in this tenor tessiture, which dominated the others in the early seventeenth century. They have chosen to represent the peak of the Baroque era, in a programme that mirrors the tutelary figure of the great Claudio. Here, the Damigella tutta bella is not that of the Scherzi musicali, but a piece by Castelani; Dove ten vai is a direct quotation from L’Orfeo, but in a duet version by Turini, while Gregori’s boisterous chaconne is an obvious reference to Zefiro torna. © Gemelli Factory