In a world of "singles," pursued even by classical music labels nowadays, here is a whole album that makes up a single, sublime musical utterance. Reflet is a follow-up, similarly concerned with light effects, to soprano Sandrine Piau's German-language Clair-Obscur of a few years back. The German songs might have been a bigger stretch for Piau than the French material here, but Reflet has possibly an even more sublime coherence. One feels that every note is almost foreordained as the program opens with classic orchestral songs from Berlioz, Henri Duparc, and the less common Charles Koechlin, proceeding into darker, more mysterious realms with Ravel's Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, and ending with the youthful ebullience of Britten's Quatre chansons françaises. An illustration of how carefully calibrated everything is here comes with two Debussy pieces, Clair de lune and "Pour remercier la pluie" (from the Six Épigraphes Antiques), arranged for orchestra from other media. These serve as entr'actes between the sections of Piau's program, and they should by all rights have been annoying: aren't there enough genuine orchestral pieces that could have filled the bill? But just listen. These fit into the patterns that run through the whole album, and they make perfect sense, just like everything else. Piau's voice is delicate, soaring, and richly beautiful; one of the miracles of the current scene is its durability and versatility. Her support from conductor Jean-François Verdier, leading the Victor Hugo Orchestra, is confidently smooth, never intruding on the spell Piau weaves. A magnificent orchestral song recital that made classical best-seller lists in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo

On his third album as Christine and the Queens—but also using the new moniker Redcar—the artist now known simply as Chris isn't pushing boundaries so much as flying over them. "My journey with gender has always been tumultuous. It's raging right now, as I'm just exploring what is beyond this," he said in a May 2022 interview, around the time he announced his adoption of masculine pronouns. "A way to express it could be switching between they and she. I kind of want to tear down that system that made us label genders in such a strict way … I think the answer is to be flickery, fluid, escaping." That's also a pretty good description of his music, which is equally, and charmingly, hard to pin down. Opener "Ma bien aimée bye bye" finds Chris, as Redcar, adopting a chanteur's pose against the late-night cabaret sounds of slinky guitars and shimmering high-hat. Sung in a seamless mélange of French and English, it's a seductive goodbye but still, it's "my life till I die." (It completely fits Chris's estimation of the Redcar personality, which he has also called a "poetic and philosophical construction"—a very Bowie thing to say—as "suave and sophisticated.") While the last Christine and the Queens album leaned heavily into hard-edged '90s funk, here there are more references to the crisp-heavy bottom beats of Shannon-style '80s dance pop, especially on "la chanson du chevalier"—remarkable for its ethereally circling round-robin vocals, ranging from high and sweet ("the man I love") to a richer lead and sharp back-up—and Grace Jones-esque industrial rhythms. "Tu sais ce qu'il me faut" adopts Jones' unique binary of wild and controlled, while "Les âmes amantes" sounds like it's from another planet: liquid and layered. There's also dancefloor euphoria ("Looking for love"), powerful synth-heavy moments ("Les étoiles," aka the stars), airy sweetness ("rien dire") and an Annie Lennox cool breeze ("la clairefontaine"). A groovy eight-and-a-half-minute epic, "Combien de temps" samples electropop pioneer Gina X. "Je te vois enfin" sets up an intriguing mystery: "Oh-oh, my father I believe they have sinned," the lyrics translate to English. "It's impossible in your books not to sin." But Chris—Redcar—is perhaps most revealing on "Mémoire des ailes." The song is so clean and hymn-like, it sounds sacred, with vocals that completely envelop even as the music edgily stutters and shudders. "I'll teach you a game, I'll teach ya," he sings, at once a promise and a tease. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

The Opera Rara label and company, true to their name, resurrect forgotten operas. There is an abundance of those in the output of Jacques Offenbach, who wrote some 100 operettas and opéras bouffes, few of which are remembered today. Opera Rara made a good pick with La Princesse de Trébizonde (1869), and this release made classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023. Offenbach is as full of good, Arthur Sullivan-like tunes as ever, and he even discarded a number of them from the operetta's original production in Baden-Baden in the process of preparing a new version for Paris. Those discarded pieces are included here, and there could hardly be a better testimony to Offenbach's melodic fecundity. Better still is the action, taking place in a carnival sideshow and suggesting all kinds of ideas for a production set in modern times. It is gloriously preposterous even by operetta standards. A girl, Zanetta, accidentally breaks the nose off a wax figure of the Princess of Trébizonde and agrees to stand in for the figure herself. A prince (a pants role) -- who has dropped a lottery ticket into the till in lieu of paying admission -- falls in love with the "Princess." Meanwhile, the lottery ticket, with a castle as the prize, comes up a winner and overturns the relationships between rich and poor. The comic scenes thus spawned are handled with the needed high spirits by the cast and the several choruses (executed by Opera Rara's remarkable house chorus), and conductor Paul Daniel is ideal in this genre, consistently pushing the tempo just slightly in order to bring the forward momentum. This recording is based on a 2022 London production but is a "cast recording," not a live one, and it is quite clear sonically. La Princesse de Trébizonde has been recorded only twice before, once in Russian (!) and once for French radio in 1966; this sprightly performance is much needed.© James Manheim /TiVo

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There is no shortage of recordings for Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps, one of the undisputed masterpieces of 20th century music. The work, composed for the musicians and instruments Messiaen had at hand in a German concentration camp, is bold enough in its conception to stand up to less-than-ideal performances, but the small ensemble Het Collectief also shows what can be accomplished with a detailed, careful, and indeed, quite virtuosic one. The work's title might be heard two ways; one may take at face value Messiaen's references to the Apocalypse, but "the end of time" may also, in view of Messiaen's experiments with rhythm and timbre in the work, be given a musical meaning. It is not a particularly experimental piece harmonically, but its disruptive treatment of rhythm was profoundly influential. The critic Olivia Giovetti has written that the captures "at once the breadth of the end times as prophesied in the Book of Revelation and the intimate, miniature detail that Messiaen introduces into the composition." Het Collectief's performance is dispassionate, careful, and extremely detailed. Anyone looking for apocalyptic shivers can find them elsewhere, but there is much to ponder and consider here on repeated hearing. Het Collectief does well with its choice of introductory work, Stalag VIIIa (the title refers to the camp at Görlitz where Messiaen was held), by the spectral composer Tristan Murail, which primes the listener to listen for textural and rhythmic detail in Messiaen's work as much as to its harmonic surface. This is a major Messiaen release that should be heard by anyone engaged with the composer.© James Manheim /TiVo

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This compilation serves as a good showcase for the work of singer/songwriter Georges Moustaki. Though Moustaki spent a decade composing for such French notables as Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, and Barbara, his solo career didn't take off until the huge success of "Le Métèque" in 1969. Like his mentor Georges Brassens, Moustaki performs mostly to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar, occasionally adding simple string arrangements. He is very much a touring artist who has a great rapport with the audience and who finds his inspiration in different cultures from around the world. This collection features some of his greatest hits, including "Le Métèque," "Ma Liberté," "Ma Solitude," and "Joseph." Moustaki's Brazilian influences are evident in the compositions "Danse" and "Eaux de Mars"; the latter is a reworking of "Aguas de Março" by Antonio Carlos Jobim.© Yuri German /TiVo

Though it's perhaps Henry's best-known work, Messe Pour le Temps Présent isn't the best display of the powers of musique concrète. Similar to the glut of crossover Moog rock albums around the same time, Henry's occasional bursts of searing computer static are accompanied by a faux '60s go-go beat. It's an intriguing release, but works better for novelty fans and beginners who would rather have a gradual immersion into musique concrète. It earns its stars, however, for its reissue on a French CD that also includes several of Henry's other compositions, including "Variations Pour une Porte et un Soupir."© John Bush /TiVo

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