Five years after her solo debut recording, Direct Message, which programmed 20th and 21st century works for trumpet and piano, trumpet player Matilda Lloyd departs the traditional repertoire (aside from the two Arban arrangements from the Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet). Instead of following more well-worn routes, Lloyd elects to present a program of Romantic period opera arias, mostly in arrangements for trumpet and chamber orchestra (undertaken here by the Britten Sinfonia under Rumon Gamba) by William Foster, who worked closely with Lloyd on this project. Lloyd's skill as a musician is evident throughout, though the two Arban tracks most clearly allow her abilities to shine. The arrangements throughout are good, though how much they add to the performances rather than transcriptions and transpositions is up for debate. Lloyd notes with excitement the decision to include two pieces by Pauline Viardot, and one of the highlights here is the treatment of Viardot's Havanaise. This is certainly a trumpet release aimed at a wider audience than trumpet and brass circles, and it has already found success on the retail market. Chandos delivers just the right atmosphere from the Church of St. Augustine, Kilburn, in London. The future is bright for this trumpeter, and one looks forward to where her path may take her. © Keith Finke /TiVo

For his last season at the helm of the Opéra de Bordeaux, Marc Minkowski—always keen to conduct forgotten works which have, in some way, marked the history of music—sets his sights on Robert le Diable, Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera which was a true social phenomenon in 19th century France. The Palazzetto Bru Zane - Centre de musique romantique française has followed suit by officially publishing this concert version, which also features some excellent vocal soloists. Admired by Balzac, Sand and Dumas, this ‘grand opéra à la française’ (great French opera) faded into obscurity after the First World War. Its creator became a sort of pariah – one met with both condescension and mockery. With its ‘seductive and haunting melodies’ (Alexandre Dratwicki), it’s nevertheless a flamboyant work that greatly inspired his contemporaries, such as Verdi, who referred to it in La Traviata. The extraordinary impact of Robert le Diable was such that it was performed a great many times on every continent. A true one-man band, Marc Minkowski has invested himself entirely in this undertaking, learning this vast score practically by heart and conducting it with his usual power and conviction. The international cast is full of surprises thanks to their deep understanding of the work and the protagonists’ fantastic pronunciation. This new release, to the credit of the Bru Zane label, revitalises our knowledge of this work that’s scarcely mentioned in specialised dictionaries. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Everyone knows Camille Saint-Saëns has a great sense of humour thanks to his Carnaval des Animaux in which no one escapes ridicule, not even him. Now the Palazzetto Bru Zane Foundation and Hervé Niquet have unearthed Phryné, a forgotten comic opera from 1893 enriched with recitatives composed by André Messager three years later.Received with immense and lasting success in its time, this brilliant work eventually fell into the abyss, never to be seen again. Fortunately, fans of Saint-Saëns made great efforts to rediscover his works on the centenary of his death in 2021. Phryné captures the "Grecomania" that was prevalent in all the arts in France at this time, especially in Offenbach’s music and even in architecture (just think of the beautiful Parisian district of New Athens in the 9th arrondissement). Ironically, and perhaps a little cheekily, Saint-Saens confessed that he was “working on this little piece with infinite pleasure” and was infatuated with this courtesan musician who had served as a model for the sculptor Praxitele.Always keen to discover a forgotten repertoire, Hervé Niquet brought together a few singers, Florie Valiquette, Cyrille Dubois, Anaïs Constans and Thomas Dolié, to breathe some life back into Phryné with his Concert Spirituel, with the aim of producing a concert version to be performed in the Opéra de Rouen Normandie in 2021. Though Lucien Augé’s libretto may seem tasteless today with its hefty dose of misogyny, Saint-Saens’ music is simply delicious, with a succession of arias and ensembles. This modest and charming opera-comedy, which Charles Gounod so enjoyed, offers a less serious and less academic take of a composer that well and truly deserves to be rediscovered. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Vieuxtemps transformed the technique and aesthetic of violin playing in the 19th century, and as a virtuoso exponent and composer he was considered a worthy successor to Paganini. His works for violin and orchestra illustrate two notable features – a liking for variation form and the fusion of emotional density with virtuosic flair. These can be heard in the impressive Variations on a Theme from Beethoven’s "Romance No. 1" and his Fantasie in E major "La sentimentale", one of his very greatest concert fantasies, where the music is influenced by bel canto. All of the works on this album were discovered after the composer’s death apart from the unfinished Violin Concerto No. 8 – one of Vieuxtemps’ last compositions and dedicated to his most illustrious pupil, Eugène Ysaÿe. © Naxos

Virtuoso repertoire, brilliantly arranged. Dominik Wagner presents here the solo Double Bass Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor as well as two duets with Benjamin Schmid on violin and Jeremias Fliedl on cello. Additionally some bonustracks featuring soprano and piano have been recorded. The musicians will be accompanied by the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn under Emmanuel Tjeknavorian a great wish of Dominik Wagner, who played the first concert together with Tjeknavorian ten years ago and has been close friends with him ever since. The Romantic composer Giovanni Bottesini – whose bicentenary we celebrate this year – is considered the Paganini of the double bass, an innovator who shaped and revolutionized the double bass repertoire. Having learnt the violin and viola, Bottesini discovered that no scholarships were on offer for either instrument, so he began studying the double bass instead – and soon showed exceptional talent. For Dominik Wagner, Bottesini’s compositions were the reason he began playing the double bass. "If you are looking for exceptional concertos for double bass, that inevitably leads you to the works of Bottesini. There was nothing anywhere near this sort of double-bass technique before", he says of the available repertoire, "it is just incredibly good music. Brilliantly orchestrated. The sections in this fantastic piece never drown each other out, it really is a model soloist’s concerto!". It’s true that the works are played relatively seldom, but this will be due to their very high technical hurdles. The alternation between harmonics and low register takes place in an instant, sometimes the bass plays higher than the violins – and the music still has to sound light and airy. It’s a challenge. That said, Bottesini exploits to the full the instrument’s sonic potential, which comes over particularly well in partnership with the violin and the cello. Accordingly, Dominik Wagner looked for his perfect partners: "I played with Benjamin Schmid in November 2020, we recorded the "Trout" Quintet together. He has been one of my greatest role models ever since I was a boy. I took the opportunity to ask him if he’d play on the recording. Jeremias Fliedl is an absolutely outstanding cellist, on a musical and technical level that practically no-one else commands. For such a demanding and rarely played piece as the Bottesini Duo, he was the ideal choice". Dominik Wagner was concerned to show off Bottesini’s versatility. This programme is not limited to works with orchestra; there are bonus titles on the album as well. Une bouche aimée, Tutto che il mondo serra, Allegretto capriccio and Rêverie with soprano Ursula Langmayr and Can Çakmur at the piano shape the repertoire into a veritable Bottesini kaleidoscope: a round tour through the works of a composer who was regarded as one of the most important musical personalities of his day. Bottesini is an unknown quantity to many music-lovers, to whom "Revolution of Bass" will come as a rewarding expansion of their horizons. Dominik Wagner comments: "People have this chance to hear new music that will appeal to them at once. If you don’t know what to expect, your enthusiasm will be all the greater in the end!" © Berlin Classics

Twenty-something Freddie De Tommaso has been the subject of plenty of buzz since signing with the major Decca label, and Passione, his debut release, has performed strongly on the charts right out of the box. It's something of a tenor throwback release, with semi-popular pieces made famous by the likes of Caruso and Mario Lanza. These are fun; the pieces by Paolo Tosti aren't heard as often as they should be, and there's a convincing English-language setting of Cara mia by Mantovani (ditto). Yet, De Tommaso also sings a couple of Puccini songs newly arranged for orchestra, and it is perhaps here that he impresses most. He does not have pure vocal sweetness, but he has charisma and command, and in the involved melodic structures of the Puccini pieces, with explosive high notes, he's quite absorbing. He gets sympathetic support from the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Renato Balsadonna, and the whole thing is attractively recorded. This is definitely a young tenor to watch, and many of these pieces are soon going to be all over British radio if they aren't already. © TiVo

A "Chopin album" from a cellist is necessarily going to include the Cello Sonata, Op. 65, one of just a few works by Chopin for anything other than piano or voice. The young and highly charismatic Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta, who is carving out a niche not unlike that occupied by Jacqueline du Pré in the 20th century, and pianist Bertrand Chamayou deliver a grand version of this work, with big contrasts between the very deliberate slow movement and the commanding finale. It's a fine recording of the work, and it complements the other two Chopin cello-and-piano pieces, virtuoso items, which are also included. But another item making this recording stand out is the presence of some less common, older items. The cellist Auguste Franchomme was the dedicatee of the Cello Sonata, and he massaged, or in the latter case composed, the cello parts of the Introduction and Polonaise and the Grand Duo Concertante operatic fantasy heard here. He is represented at the end by a Nocturne of his own composition and by an ingenious arrangement of one of Chopin's piano nocturnes that works in material from another nocturne. This would not have seemed odd to a cellist of a century ago, who might also have played Glazunov's beautifully idiomatic arrangement of the piano Etude in C sharp minor, Op. 25, No. 7. This is another winner from a new star of the cello. Sony's big sound here complements Gabetta's aims beautifully.© TiVo

Other than the piano, there were few instruments on which Chopin focused his attention, which makes this album featuring cellist Anne Gastinel something of a rarity. Their united voice – as always, remote from the chorus of the mundane and the media-fixated – is a subtle, inspired cantilena. For here it is all about the singing voice that Chopin declared to be his model, overtly influenced as he was by Italian bel canto opera. Anne Gastinel savours every moment, not only with the sense of refinement she shares with the greatest singers, but with a palpable musical breathing, sensitively illuminated at the piano by Claire Désert, an accompanist in the very noblest tradition. Bel canto – the very words conjure up the idea of virtuosity, technical challenge. Chopin’s Sonata for Cello and Piano is all of that: an intense and extensive masterwork, its Largo one of the most beautiful elegies ever written, while its fast outer movements are a veritable tournament of skill between the two performers. The Sonata forms the keystone of this programme, in which the cello is decked out in all the finery cellists love to display: it includes the Introduction and Polonaise brillante in the arrangement by Maurice Gendron, where, as Anne Gastinel puts it, "the two soloists have an equal share in the virtuosity", also two of Chopin’s Nocturnes arranged by David Popper (Op. 9 No. 2 in E-flat major) and Gregor Piatigorsky (No. 20 in C-sharp minor), and finally the Grand Duo concertant, a work jointly composed by Chopin and his cellist friend Auguste Franchomme. Anne Gastinel here moves light-footedly through the piece, her voice always gentle, artless, never forced. Such confidence in a hushed tone of intimacy speaks volumes to the ear, as it listens between the lines, between the notes. © naive classique

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