Philip Glass' three operas based on films by Jean Cocteau, inspired by the composer's youthful experiences in Paris, are among his most variegated works and perhaps among the ones most likely to win over those unpersuaded by the composer. This release took shape as Katia and Marielle Labèque performed concerts devoted to two-piano arrangements of numbers from these operas in 2020 and 2023; the arrangements are by Glass colleague Michael Riesman. Many recordings of Glass have come from his own orbit, but this one, released by the Deutsche Grammophon label and a presence on classical best-seller charts in early 2024, shows the value in opening up the field. The Labèques bring a fluent but lively quality to the music that illuminates the material out of which the operas are woven. Sample the ragtime-like opening, "Le café," from Act I at the beginning. Elsewhere, one hears echoes of Gluck, Bach, and more, all superimposed on Glass' characteristic repeating patterns. The durable popularity of Katia and Marielle Labèque, still at the top of the duo piano heap, is remarkable, and it has occurred in part because the sisters are unafraid to take on new repertory. Here, they have done a spectacular job.© James Manheim /TiVo

Backed by the Sun King despite a lukewarm audience reception at first, Lully's Atys (1676) went on to become one of the composer's most successful operas, with revivals at French court theaters as late as 1753. In modern times, however, it is a considerably rarer item due to the massive forces and time required. Christophe Rousset was in the pit as harpsichordist when conductor William Christie gave the first modern revival of the work in the late '80s. That experience marks this 2024 release, which made classical best-seller lists at the beginning of that year. That is not common for a hefty five-act Baroque opera, but even a bit of sampling will confirm why it happened: Rousset, from the keyboard, brings tremendous energy to the opera. He pushes the tempo in the numerous dances and entrance numbers, and the musicians of Les Talens Lyriques and the singers of the Choeur du Chambre de Namur, all of whom have worked closely with Rousset in the past, keep right up. The singers in the solo roles are all fine; haut-contre Reinoud Van Mechelen in the title role and Ambroisine Bré as the goddess Cybèle, who sets the tragic plot in motion, are standouts. The sound from the increasingly engineering-expert Château de Versailles label is exceptionally clear in complex textures, and the sensuous cover art (representing, it is true, not the Roman mythological figure of Atys but Hippomène and Atalante) is a bonus. In the end, this is Rousset's Atys, and that is a very good thing.© James Manheim /TiVo

Ravel's piano works include some of the most popular keyboard pieces of the 20th century, so pianist Philippe Bianconi has plenty of competition for this double-album complete cycle. Of course, one advantage of the complete set is that it can include the less common pieces like Ravel's musical impressions of Borodin and Chabrier and the Menuet en Ut dièse mineur ("Minuet in C sharp minor"). These lesser-known works, mostly miniatures, fit Bianconi's style beautifully; he is a precise, concise player who brings out Ravel's considerable rhythmic subtlety. His Ravel performances tap into a long French tradition stretching back to Robert Casadesus and his wife, Gaby, who was one of Bianconi's teachers. Imbued with the French conservatory values of clarity and restraint, Bianconi sacrifices mood for clean execution. In Le Tombeau de Couperin, he is wonderful, one of the very best available, catching the ways Ravel stretches the Baroque rhythms in a really uncanny way. Many pianists can handle the technical challenges of Gaspard de la nuit these days, but few can seem as effortless while doing so. In music that depends more on extramusical references, such as the four-hand Ma mère l'Oye (recorded with Clément Lefebvre), some listeners may want a bit more color, while others will find Bianconi's approach bracing and fresh, with an evocative Miroirs. Sample several different works. Most listeners will agree that the La Dolce Volta label's sound, from the Grande Salle at the Metz Arsenal, is ideal for the music and the music-making here. © James Manheim /TiVo

Praised for his meticulous fidelity to the composer's intentions, as well as for his rich tonal palette and the warmth of his expressions, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has won many admirers for his five albums of the complete solo piano music of Claude Debussy. These recordings were produced by Chandos between 2007 and 2009, and they have now been gathered into a handsome box set; each disc is presented with its own cardboard sleeve and the original liner notes that accompanied each release. The roster of artists who have recorded Debussy's keyboard music is a long and distinguished one, though Bavouzet is easily ranked in the upper echelons, equal in stature among such luminaries as Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Krystian Zimerman, Maurizio Pollini, Angela Hewitt, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and Pascal Rogé. Experienced listeners will already have favorite recordings of the Préludes, Images, Estampes, and Études, as well as the perennially popular Suite bergamasque, Children's Corner, and other picturesque pieces. However, many will be won over by the consistency of Bavouzet's playing, and newcomers will find that his disciplined yet gorgeous readings are a great way to begin appreciating these charming classics. Chandos provides excellent sound that gives the piano a clear presence yet takes nothing away from Bavouzet's atmospheric colors or the radiant acoustics. Highly recommended.© TiVo

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Everyone thinks that they know Alceste by Lully, and yet this 1674 masterpiece has almost never been recorded in its entirety. Apart from the Malgoire version from 1975 with Bruce Brewer and Felicity Palmer, which is starting to become outdated, the real treat is a second versoin by the same Malgoire twenty years later with Jean-Philippe Lafont and Colette Alliot-Lugaz... And so we can only take our hats off to the new discographical opus from Christophe Rousset's Talens Lyriques, a lively and elegant reading which allows us to rediscover everything that was so innovative about this brilliant, effervescent Florentine, who would become a typical Versaillais, a courtesan and a wheeler-dealer. King Louis XIV - 36 years old, still with all his own teeth and a victorious war leader - could only feel flattered by the piece signed by Quinault: Alcide, who covets the beautiful Alceste (who has been promised to Admetus), is none other than Hercules himself - Louis XIV seeing himself in Hercules saving the beautiful Madame de Montespan from the clutches of her husband. To be sure, in this opera, Admetus/Hercules magnanimously hands Alceste, whom he has saved from hell, to her husband, while the poor Mr Montespan would end his career and his life exiled in Gascony... Honour intact. The Sun King loved the work, to the point that he commanded that rehearsals be held at Versailles. According to Madame de Sévigné, "The King declared that if he found himself in Paris when it was performed, he would go to see it every night." That being said, if Alceste suited the tastes of the court, it didn't do so well in Paris, where Lully's enemies, jealous of the extravagant privileges that he had won (the exclusive right to "have sung any whole piece in France, wither in French verse or in other languages, without the written permission of said Sir Lully, on pain of a ten thousand livre fine, and confiscation of theatres, equipment, decorations, costumes..."), heaped plot upon plot, while the gallant Mercury sang his little couplet: Dieu !  Le bel opéra ! Rien de plus pitoyable ! Cerbère y vient japper d'un aboi lamentable !  Oh ! Quelle musique de chien ! Oh ! Quelle musique du diable ! [Lord!/Fine opera!/There's nothing so pitiable!/Cerberus is yapping, his howls lamentable!/What doggish music!/What devilish music!]. Posterity would decide otherwise, and Rousset proved it triumphantly. © SM/Qobuz

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Casual buyers and browsers should note that the vocal works on this album, accompanied by orchestra, are not the original works of Debussy. They were made in 2012 by composer Robin Holloway at the request of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. They were performed at that time by Renée Fleming but have not been recorded until now. The settings are unorthodox and never boring, and they will probably strike different listeners in different ways. Holloway reorders the songs, believing that they were not intended as a sequenced set (probably debatable), inserts some of the composer's Verlaine settings in the new ordering, adds transitions between most of them, and tacks on a high-powered epilogue of his own. The end result, perhaps, is Debussy for the 21st century, amped up and intense, with hidden psychological themes and ideas wrung out and brought to the fore by the orchestration. There will be little disagreement, however, about two of the main attractions: soprano Vannina Santoni is a talented newcomer from whom one wants to hear more, and Mikko Franck, heard at the end in La Mer, is an excellent Debussy conductor; his rendition of this well-trodden work is full of detail and entirely absorbing. Santoni has a big voice that stands up to these orchestrations, and Alpha's sound from the Radio France auditorium keeps everything in balance. Nothing if not an intriguing Debussy release. © James Manheim /TiVo

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Those searching for singer Cyrille Dubois online will find him called variously a tenor or a countertenor. One can understand the confusion. He is actually what the French Baroque called a haut-contre, a tenor with an extended high range sung in a light falsetto-like voice. It is not a true falsetto, and really, it has to be heard to be appreciated. It is something like the Italian tenore di grazia of the early 19th century. That, in itself, is reason enough to hear this album, but wait, as the old TV pitchmen yelled, "there's more!" Dubois' program includes a good deal of Rameau, including the exuberant title track, composed when Rameau was 80, but there are also pieces by his contemporaries, mostly in a pastoral vein. Rameau was such an imposing figure that he dominated the scene, but the other composers here, like François Lupien Grenet and Bernard de Bury, are all but unknown, and many of the pieces are world premieres. They offer valuable insights into the stock characters and common ideas in the Parisian 18th century operatic scene, and they are full of opportunities for Dubois to display the striking range of colors in his voice. He is backed by the Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir under the direction of György Vashegyi, who also get a group of obscure but highly listenable instrumental pieces. With fine sound from Hungary's Kodály Centre, this is a must for lovers of the French Baroque and of male voice types in general. © James Manheim /TiVo

The remarkable Turkish pianist Fazıl Say (born 1970) here offers us a suitably remarkable album, recorded in 2016 in the Great Hall of the Salzburg Mozarteum and given over to the Premier Livre of Debussy's Préludes – 1910 – which he sets up in against the six Gnossiennes by Satie (1890 for the first three, 1897 for the latter three) and to the pieces which made him famous, the Gymnopédies of 1888. It's quite stunning to hear these works and to reflect on the fact that Satie's works actually come before Debussy's Préludes – by almost two decades, in fact. It is hardly surprising the Satie has been thought a real avant-gardist both in his day and by minimalists today. Considering how different these two were, it was natural that they should have been friends, especially given Debussy's tendency towards jealousy of his contemporaries... But it is impossible to be jealous of a kind, bubbly soul like Satie. Say brings immense tenderness to these two opposite poles – poles so far removed that they almost join back up. © SM/Qobuz

Toscanini regarded this orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition as a genuine treatise on instrumentation, on a par with that of Berlioz: scored for the same instrumental forces as La Valse, Ravel’s version quickly established itself ahead of all the many competing orchestrations of Mussorgsky’s piano suite! In François-Xavier Roth’s view, La Valse and the Pictures together represent the peak of the composer’s output for the symphony orchestra of his time – that is to say, as the musicians of Les Siècles reconstruct it for us today. What a joy to get back to the original colours of this music! © harmonia mundi

Described as France's answer to Eminem, Normandy rapper Aurelien Cotentin, aka Orelsan, proved he was just as capable of creating controversy as his U.S. counterpart with the leaked track "Sale Pute," a misogynistic tale of domestic violence that had everyone from women's rights groups to the Culture Minister calling for his music to be banned. Perhaps burned by the hostile response, his second album, Le Chant des Sirènes, slightly tones down his venom-spitting persona in favor of a more mature and reflective approach that largely deals with the pressures of his notorious rise to fame. Despite this less vitriolic lyrical stance, the album's sound is still just as dark as 2009 debut Perdu d'Avance, as Skread's claustrophobic production shifts from industrial dubstep ("Raelsan," "Mauvaise Idée") to aggressive crunk (Gringe collaboration "Ils Sont Cools") to nocturnal Streets-esque suburban rap ("Finir Mal") throughout, while even its poppier moments such as the Timbaland-inspired title track, the clattering R&B of "Si Seul" (featuring a rare melodic lead vocal from Orelsan), and the low-key acoustic hip-pop of "La Morale" are laced with a sense of melancholy that suggests the past two years have hit the 29-year-old hard. Elsewhere, the authentic old-skool vinyl-scratching pastiche of "1990" and the bizarre fusion of twinkling music boxes, nursery rhyme melodies, and childlike vocals on "La Petite Marchande de Porte-Clefs" briefly lighten the mood, while there are flashes of his former self on his biting attack on Parisian society, "Suicide Social." But while Le Chant des Sirènes is unlikely to make as many headlines as his previous output, it's an inventive if admittedly downbeat progression suggesting that the enfant terrible of French rap might be growing up. © Jon O'Brien /TiVo

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This may not rate as highly as her best mid-'60s recordings, which are less MOR-oriented. That stated, it's about as good as late-'60s MOR Continental pop gets, with tastefully imaginative orchestration, strong melodies, and sexy vocals. It's perhaps even sadder and more sentimental than was the norm for Francoise--she perpetually seems to be singing as though she's gazing out of a deserted chateau on a rainy afternoon. She largely forsakes original material here (although a couple cuts bear her writing credit), and offers fine, haunting French interpretations of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," and Phil Ochs' "There But for Fortune," and Ricky Nelson's "Lonesome Town."© Richie Unterberger /TiVo