The Stabat Mater of Francis Poulenc, completed in 1951, may be the latest work ever performed on historical instruments, but they do make a difference in this rendition by the instrumental group Les Siècles, with the vocal Ensemble Aedes (no mosquito repellent needed) under director Mathieu Romano. He forges a sharp, incisive vocal style to go with the penetrating sounds of the winds and brass in a sensitive performance that runs crosswise to rather than emphasizing the neo-Romantic sentimentality of this late Poulenc work. It makes a good pairing with the earlier Litanies à la Vierge noire, for both works were inspired by the figure of the Black Madonna of Rocamadour, and both involved the composer's responses to the deaths of friends. The Litanies are less commonly heard, and they are performed here in their original version for a three-part female choir and organ. It is a transparent piece with stark dissonances, and it makes a stronger impression than the later orchestral version. In between is a chanson by Clément Janequin, which is claimed by Romano to show "the same mastery of the art of choral composition and of harmony, and the same 'apparent simplicity' favouring the expression of pure emotion." With the album clocking in at just over 41 minutes, the inclusion of a few more works by Janequin or another Renaissance composer might have allowed a fuller evaluation of this idea, but the performances, as usual with these groups, are compelling, and they are augmented by the rich sounds of soprano soloist Marianne Croux and of the Cavaillé-Coll organ played by Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas in the Litanies. There is much here to attract Poulenc lovers.© James Manheim /TiVo

Founded in 2017 by young choral and orchestral conductor Guillemette Daboval, the Ensemble Esquisses is an all-female choir with an ever-changing line-up made up of singers who have only recently graduated from their studies. With one shared desire, the ensemble are drawn to repertoire for equal voices and unison, which the young choristers explore throughout Par un Matin, the group’s debut album released on the Evidence label. The sophisticated programme offers a selective view of the 20th and 21st centuries, with André Caplet’s “Messe à 3 Voix”, Chausson's elegiac “Chant Funèbre Op.28” and Poulenc's “Litanies à la Vierge Noire” as well as a world premiere of Olivier Kaspar's “Chansons Erotiques” (inspired by bawdy texts from the 16th century) and the “Agnus” from composer Caroline Marçot. The task of singing with equal voices is an extremely difficult one since it requires an extremely heightened ability to listen to each other’s voices, as well as a great deal of self-sacrifice in search of a collective timbre. This state of mind often requires years of work and, more specifically, maturity. We’re not sure what type of magic is at work here, but the combined effort of Guillemette Daboval and her singers has produced something of striking purity. There are real layers at play here: the textures, the melodic accents and inflections, the roundness of the melismas. The precision of movement becomes all the more impressive in this kaleidoscopic choice of repertoires, which is also highly erudite. Daboval and the Esquisses members have succeeded in creating their own signature sound with their very first performance, and all with breathtaking ease, something that other renowned choirs can take years to perfect. Just as we have in the past spoken about the ‘Voces8 timbre’, the ‘Tenebrae timbre’ and the ‘Deller Consort timbre’, here we are witnessing the birth of the ‘Esquisses timbre’. Qobuzissime! © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz

With the range of choices for Mozart's last symphonies on the market, one might wonder whether there was anything truly new to say about these works. After hearing the new recordings by Ensemble Resonanz, of which this is the second, one will wonder no more. Conductor Riccardo Minasi (actually a violinist and a democratically elected leader for these recordings) offers highly subjective readings, with generally fast tempos (sometimes very fast), strong contrasts between different theme groups, and tempo shifts that have until now been considered unidiomatic to the Classical style. His ensemble contains modern strings but period winds, brass, and timpani, creating a unique texture that reveals a good deal of polyphony in the wind writing. Minasi tones down his approach a bit compared with his earlier recording of the final three symphonies. There is nothing here to compare with the rhythmic lurch in the minuet of the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, but with the driving rhythms and an intensity added by the wiry historical instruments, the readings feel fresh and have a good deal of tension, right from the opening movement of the Symphony No. 36 in C major, K. 425 ("Linz"). It is puzzling that Harmonia Mundi opted for a church acoustic instead of the Elbphilharmonie, where the orchestra is resident. The sound is a bit murky, but it is not enough to detract from some novel and fully thought-through new Mozart performances.© James Manheim /TiVo

This double album celebrates the hundredth birthday of György Ligeti (2023), which coincides with the beginning of Pierre Bleuse’s tenure as head of the Ensemble InterContemporain, founded in Paris in 1976 by Pierre Boulez. It also represents an excellent entry point for diving more deeply into the music of this great Hungarian composer, who passed away in 2006. The program, revolving around seven concert and chamber works, encompasses each of Ligeti’s creative periods, from his post-Bartok beginnings prior to his exile to Western Europe, up until his final works, like the “Violin Concerto” that opens the album, featuring a highly sensitive interpretation from violinist Hae-Sun Kang. The work teems with complex sonoric details and stunning, unusual tones, such as those of the ocarina. The “Cello Concerto” (Renaud Déjardin), “Piano Concerto” (Dmitri Vassilakis) and the “Chamber Concerto for 13 Instrumentalists” further highlight the InterContemporain’s superb soloists. Within the album’s chamber music selection, one discovers pieces for solo piano and for four hands, the “Sonata for Solo Viola,” and the “Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano” composed in 1982 to pay homage to the trio that Brahms had written for the same instruments a century prior. © François Hudry/Qobuz

After staking out new territory with the underrated South of Heaven, Slayer brought back some of the pounding speed of Reign in Blood for their third major-label album, Seasons in the Abyss. Essentially, Seasons fuses its two predecessors, periodically kicking up the mid-tempo grooves of South of Heaven with manic bursts of aggression. "War Ensemble" and the title track each represented opposite sides of the coin, and they both earned Slayer their heaviest MTV airplay to date. In fact, Seasons in the Abyss is probably their most accessible album, displaying the full range of their abilities all in one place, with sharp, clean production. Since the band is refining rather than progressing or experimenting, Seasons doesn't have quite the freshness of its predecessors, but aside from that drawback, it's strong almost all the way from top to bottom (with perhaps one or two exceptions). Lyrically, the band rarely turns to demonic visions of the afterlife anymore, preferring instead to find tangible horror in real life -- war, murder, human weakness. There's even full-fledged social criticism, which should convince any doubters that Slayer aren't trying to promote the subjects they sing about. Like Metallica's Master of Puppets or Megadeth's Peace Sells...but Who's Buying, Seasons in the Abyss paints Reagan-era America as a cesspool of corruption and cruelty, and the music is as devilishly effective as ever.© Steve Huey /TiVo

After the widespread acclaim for their previous recordings of C. P. E Bach and Haydn, the musicians of the Resonanz Ensemble of Hamburg pursue their explorations on modern instruments. Here they tackle Mozart’s last three symphonies, which, it is generally agreed, ‘require no introduction’. And yet Riccardo Minasi does much more than introduce them: he reintroduces them to us. The rhetorical, if not theatrical, dimension of the celebrated trilogy comes into full focus here and the result is irresistible. © harmonia mundi

The Te Deum was one of the major cultural emblems of the French court in the late 17th and early 18th centuries; in the apt phrasing of annotator Bénédicte Hertz on this 2024 Alpha release, it "exploited two key driving forces of kingly politics: glorification and fear." The splendid trumpet-and-drum sound has made the Charpentier Te Deum heard here into one of the enduring hits of the Baroque era; it even turned up as a theme song for the Eurovision Song Contest a few years back. Ensemble Les Surprises and its imposingly named director, Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, deliver a strong version with crack playing; it can stand with any others among the many on the market, and Alpha backs up the performances with a spacious but never muddy acoustic at the Metz Arsenal that retains detail and doesn't let the fine soloists get lost. However, what really makes this release a standout is the presence of another Te Deum; Charpentier's is the only one that is commonly heard. The Te Deum "de Lyon" of Henry Desmarest here receives its world premiere. It was also written for the French court; the "de Lyon" moniker seems to come from the fact that a copy of the manuscript is housed there. The work is entirely satisfying. It is later than Charpentier's work and breaks up the Te Deum text differently, allowing more room for the Italianate arias that were beginning to creep into French music, but the imposing quality of the genre is not lost, and this makes for interesting tensions. Lovers of the French Baroque will find that the music here enriches their understanding of the court and its mighty musical apparatus, and really, this is pleasing music for anyone, even Eurovision fans. This release landed on classical best-seller charts in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo

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

« My main goal is to create a specific identity for each album I make. This time I chose to involve Anders Jormin and Audun Kleive, two of Scandinavia's finest jazz artists. The result is Polarity, an album based on both new and older compositions of mine, recorded in a unique acoustic setting [...] The idea to work on a project for a trio came to me a few years ago, but it is only recently that the idea has really begun to take form. The choice of musicians was not difficult, with Audun Kleive and Anders Jormin both having long track records on the Scandinavian jazz scene, and both still eager to explore and energize the established trio format. This is the first time the three of us have made a recording like this together, vacating the usual studio setting in favour of the acoustics of a church. [...] The title track Polarity started out as an improvisation which I was working into a finished melody. We supplemented the ensemble’s palette of sounds by introducing an analogue synthesizer that grows in intensity, its sound filling the room with autonomous power. » — Jan Gunnar Hoff, 2018

The subtitle of Tchaikovsky's String Sextet in D minor, Op. 70, "Souvenir de Florence," suggests that it is among the composer's lighter works, but really, only its elegant third movement, which apparently occurred to the composer during an Italian sojourn, fits that characterization. As for the rest, Tchaikovsky labored over the music for several years, putting it aside and taking it up again. The sextet has an intensity peculiar to late Tchaikovsky, plunging in on an unresolved chord right at the outset as if the troubled dialogue it embodies were already underway before the music began. The Nash Ensemble captures the way Tchaikovsky's chamber music seems to strive toward symphonic dimensions (the Piano Trio in A minor is another good example) but then is confined with great tension to the smaller format. Listen to the passage about two minutes into the finale, where the texture contracts to a single note and then begins to expand again; it is masterfully handled. The String Sextet in D major, Op. 10, of the 17-year-old Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a work that did not receive its premiere recording until the 1980s, is even more heated, perhaps the chamber work Mahler would have written if he had written one. The traces of early Schoenberg are also heard in the work, and once again, the Nash Ensemble's performance is full-blooded and forceful. This is a major late Romantic chamber release, with unidiomatic church sound among the very few weaknesses. This album hit classical best-seller charts in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo

Even though his score Furyo de Nagisa Oshima has since entered into legend (closely followed by that of The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci), Ryuichi Sakamoto has worked with many other filmmakers, including Pedro Almodóvar and Brian De Palma. With The Revenant, he adds Alejandro González Iñárritu to his growing list. The Mexican director used his work World Citizen (co-written with David Sylvian) in his film Babel back in 2006, but had never placed an order for a complete score. For this long, flamboyant film - in which blood and violence feature heavily - Sakamoto takes the opposite direction with his music: slow and progressive themes; sublime soundscapes. This contemplative mood, which can at times be oppressive, was designed by Sakamoto with the help of a colleague, spawning electronic music with which he also works regularly. American Bryce Dessner also features, guitarist of indie band The National and also a contemporary music composer. Together, the three musicians sculpt a masterful score, combining acoustic and electronic, and, like all great soundtracks, it can be enjoyed with eyes closed. ©MZ/Qobuz