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This double-album release from the specialist Palazzetto Bru Zane label, better known for opera but doing fine here with orchestral music, landed on classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023, and this is really no wonder. The album puts together many attractive features, beginning with fine work from the beefy (34 violins) Orchestre National de Lyon under conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider. The album comprises a little history of the French tone poem from the third quarter of the 19th century to the second decade of the 20th, and it includes many works that will be unfamiliar to all but specialists, along with a few hits (Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre, Op. 40, Paul Dukas' L'apprenti sorcier ["The Sorcerer's Apprentice"] in a brisk, colorful performance, Emmanuel Chabrier's España, and perhaps Franck's Le chasseur maudit). As for the rest, there are no fewer than four works by women composers: Lili Boulanger, Augusta Holmès, Mel Bonis, and Charlotte Sohy; the Danse mystique of the latter is perhaps both the most obscure and the most compelling. Several works by better-known male composers also seem well worth removal from the historical scrap heap; sample Ernest Chausson's hushed Viviane, Op. 5, or Vincent d'Indy's Istar, Op. 42, the tone poem Wagner never wrote. Or the title work by Henri Duparc, much more familiar as a song composer. More generally, one is impressed by the cohesion of the program as a whole, even as French styles underwent fundamental change. Most of the composers try to show a mastery of the large orchestra and of the big tune as second subject. This is a highly listenable group of pieces that hearers will be glad to know better.© James Manheim /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 Apart from the Malgoire version from 1975 with Bruce Brewer and Felicity Palmer, which is starting to become outdated, the real treat is a second versoin by the same Malgoire twenty years later with Jean-Philippe Lafont and Colette Alliot-Lugaz...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

Released in 1986, this Roland Joffé film with Robert de Niro and Jeremy Irons recounts the conscience tragedy that befell the Jesuits in the 18th century when they were forced to abandon their mission on the Guaraní in South America. As is often the case with Ennio Morricone, the score he wrote is witness to the successful marriage of a certain classicism and other external elements (namely multicultural) that are grafted together. The introductory track (appearing in the end credits) embodies this aesthetic with extraordinary force and emotion: we encounter a celestial indigenous choir, tribal percussions, as well as a mystical oboe (On Earth as it is in Heaven). On Falls, it is a mysterious and spellbinding pan flute which interprets the theme, while the oboe - this time accompanied by a harpsichord - is used once again by the composer on Gabriel’oboe. The other tracks on the soundtrack are of an infinite richness, passing from tenderness (the flute/guitar dialogue on Brothers) to darkness (Remorse, Refusal, Alone), from melancholy (Carlotta) to action (Ascunsion). © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

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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

This release showed up on classical best-seller lists in early 2024, and one wonders whether the buyers were influenced by the main graphics, referring only to Puccini "Orchestral Songs & Works"; listeners may have been intrigued by the idea of hitherto unknown orchestral songs by Puccini. He never wrote any such thing; heard here are transcriptions of songs for voice and piano by the student Puccini, plus a few early orchestral works and a string-orchestra version of the string quartet Crisantemi, which has been done before. The music here, transcriptions of music that is all-but-unknown to begin with, certainly could be described as niche, but it is interesting for Puccini fans and others, for it has the flavor of a labor of love. Transcriber Johannes X. Schachtner teases out the hints of the mature Puccini in these songs, many of which sound quite operatic even though Puccini had yet to write a single note of opera. Sample the full-scale "orchestral" introduction in Mentia all'avviso, written for the composer's final exams at the Milan Conservatory, or the little scrap of stage action represented by Casa mia, casa mia. Schachtner's work is retrospective, drawing on Puccini's operatic style. The Münchner Rundfunkorchester and conductor Ivan Repušić also offer convincing performances of the marginally better-known Preludio sinfonico and Capriccio sinfonico, which adumbrate the mature Puccini equally well. Hear the middle section of the latter work, and then listen to the beginning of La bohème. The song performances by tenor Charles Castronovo are at the right scale, neither full-on operatic nor chamber in scope. This is certainly recommended to Puccini lovers, and also for gifts to the same from those struggling to find music Puccini lovers may not know.© James Manheim /TiVo

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