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Haendel : Water Music, Rodrigo
Marc Minkowski
Symphonic Music - Released September 27, 2010 | naïve classique
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Stereophile: Record To Die For
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Moyreau: Complete Harpsichord Music
Fernando De Luca
Miscellaneous - Released March 25, 2022 | Brilliant Classics
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The first-ever survey on record of the complete surviving output by a significant contemporary of Rameau: a missing piece in the jigsaw of the French Baroque. Christophe Moyreau (1700-1774) was born and died in the city of Orleans, and perhaps one reason why he never attained the fame of contemporaries such as Couperin and Rameau was that he never occupied posts in the French capital. Too much of his career is still shrouded in mystery, but he listed his occupation as "organist" in the marriage register of his home church in 1726 – becoming father to 11 children over the next 18 years – and at some point he became titular organist at the important Church of Saint-Aignan before taking up the post as organist of the cathedral in 1737. It seems to have been the lengthy restoration of the cathedral’s organ which prompted Moyreau in 1753 to gather together much of his previously composed music into six books of Pièces de clavecin. He published them in two volumes during a lengthy period of what would otherwise have been enforced inactivity; he also wrote and issued a small but influential teaching manual in the same year. The 126 separate pieces in the six books are remarkably varied in style but consistent in quality of invention. There are dances and character-pieces, organised into long suites, but also standalone overtures, sonatas and a solo concerto. The last of the suites concludes with a grand evocation of the bells of Orleans which has become his best-known work. The second volume includes six "simphonies" for harpsichord, also recorded here by Fernando de Luca, making this set by far the most comprehensive collection of Moyreau’s music ever released. © Brilliant Classics
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Handel: Famous Pieces
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
Classical - Released December 1, 2023 | PentaTone
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Le secret de Monsieur Marais
Luca Pianca
Classical - Released April 3, 2020 | Alpha Classics
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Between 1680 and 1728, Marin Marais brought the 'pièce de viole' to the peak of perfection. An ‘unremitting’ teacher, he was also the publisher of his own music and invented special signs to notate certain ornaments for the viol. In the course of his research at the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Italian gambist Vittorio Ghielmi studied these manuscript codes, in the hand of Marais himself or his direct students. ‘This led me to a new vision of French Baroque music, which applies not only to the viola da gamba, but also to vocal and orchestral music. These signs reveal the technique of playing in action. Contrary to the static descriptions of the treatises of the time, one has the impression of seeing didactic “videos”’. This album, entirely devoted to the music of Marais, alternates récits for solo viola with orchestral pieces, all of them reinterpreted in the light of the new discovery of Monsieur Marais’s ‘codes’. In addition to Parisian viols of the time, Vittorio Ghielmi owns an instrument by the famous luthier Michel Colichon (a friend of Marais’s teacher Sainte-Colombe), made in Paris in 1688. Only two of the five surviving viols by Colichon are still in playable condition. © Alpha Classics
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Pièces de caractère
Vittoro Ghielmi
Classical - Released January 1, 2002 | naïve classique
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J.S. Bach: Miscellaneous Pieces for Harpsichord
Pieter-Jan Belder
Classical - Released September 28, 2022 | Brilliant Classics
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Over a career spanning more than 30 years, the Dutch harpsichordist and conductor Pieter-Jan Belder has become renowned as a Bach interpreter with his surveys in concert and on record of the keyboard and orchestral masterpieces such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos and no fewer than three recordings of the Goldberg Variations. On this album, recorded in 2020 and 2021 on a modern Titus Crijnen copy of a Ruckers model, Pieter-Jan Belder turns to the overlooked corners of Bach’s early writing for the harpsichord. These include standalone fugues, fantasias and suites based on themes by contemporary composers such as Reincken and Albinoni. Nevertheless, there is no sense of routine or technical exercise about them. The pieces here are almost all extrovert, playing to the strengths of the young Bach as a performer as well as composer, and already demonstrating that confidence which would go on to mark his mature compositions. An appreciation of French flair is discernible in the F minor Suite, BWV 823 and elsewhere, but the dominant influence is the keyboard writing of Girolamo Frescobaldi, whose toccatas and canzonas were studied by Bach from an early age. The better-known pieces here include the sober and songful Aria variata, BWV 989 with its courtly French theme, and the E-flat Prelude, Fugue and Allegro originally written for lute, but which also finds a happy home on the harpsichord. The most famous but also most uncharacteristic piece is the mysterious Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother which appears to be a work of Bach’s late teenage years, though no definite corroborative proof of its commission or purpose has yet come to light. Rather, it seems unique in Bach’s output as a humorous parody of styles and emotions. © Brilliant Classics
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Handel: La grande sarabande
Orchestre Leopoldinum-Wroclaw, Karol Teutsch
Classical - Released September 3, 2007 | naïve
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L'Ile Enchantée
Capriccio Stravagante Orchestra
Classical - Released July 20, 2004 | Alpha Classics
Even by the supremely high production standards of Alpha recordings, this issue is especially splendid. Entitled Versailles, L'ile enchantée, it fully lives up to its name. As directed by Skip Sempé, the widely varied program features music written for Louis XIV's pleasure palace, performed by the Capriccio Stravagante Orchestra with mezzo soprano Guillemette Laurens and bass violist Jay Bernfeld. Each work is superbly selected, and every performance is absolutely idiomatic and wonderfully alive. There is wit and tenderness and elegance and, yes, nobility to their performances, which taken together form as much a portrait of the Sun King as the palace of Versailles itself. As organized into eight Divertissements, Sempé's choices range from the grand Ouverture de Psyché by Lully to the intimate Mes Yeux by Campra, from the soulful Les Voix Humaines by Marais to the massive Passacaille in C by Louis Couperin. As captured in the evocative photographs by Jean-Baptiste Leroux and reproduced in Alpha's superlative program book, Versailles looks every bit as beautiful as this disc sounds. Anyone who loves Baroque music, particularly French Baroque music, will love this disc.© TiVo
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The Music of Erik Satie
Alessandro Simonetto (Pianist, Harpsichordist)
Classical - Released September 18, 2023 | OnClassical
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Pièces de clavecin & airs d'après M. de Lully
Café Zimmermann
Classical - Released January 1, 2005 | Alpha Classics
Once again, Alpha has released a package that combines aesthetic edification with intellectual education, superlative performances with exquisite production values, sublime art with mundane commerce. The conceit here is Jean-Henri d'Anglebert's virtuosic and characterful harpsichord suites, as well as his arrangements of excerpts from Lully's ballets and operas played by Céline Frisch, coupled with performances of Lully's originals played by Café Zimmerman, and concluded with Frisch playing five of d'Anglebert's fugues for organ. Thus the listener is able to hear not only insightful and exciting performances of d'Anglebert's music, but to hear them in context of brilliant performances of the originals, thereby setting the seal on d'Anglebert's inventiveness. Frisch is a first-rate player with a powerful technique, a complete command of the keyboard, and a wonderfully fresh approach to the repertoire. The chamber orchestra Café Zimmerman attacks Lully's originals with spirit, sensitivity, and fire. And as always, Alpha's sound is warm, close, and real. Anyone who enjoys the music of the French Baroque will enjoy this two-disc set.© TiVo
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Rameau & Handel: Dom Bedos
Ensemble Zaïs
Classical - Released October 20, 2014 | Paraty Productions
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Satie, E.: Pieces Froides / Gnossiennes / Gymnopedies
Patrick Cohen
Classical - Released January 1, 1998 | Glossa
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Haendel, Marais & Destouches: Semele
Les Ombres
Classical - Released January 26, 2015 | Mirare
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Glass: Cocteau Trilogy
Katia Labèque
Classical - Released February 23, 2024 | Universal Music Division Decca Records France
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Qobuz Album of the Week
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
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Aux étoiles - French Symphonic Poems
Orchestre National De Lyon
Classical - Released October 20, 2023 | Bru Zane
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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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Festin Royal du Mariage du Comte d'Artois
Alexis Kossenko
Classical - Released August 25, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles
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Mozart's Mannheim
Freiburger Barockorchester
Classical - Released May 19, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Several recordings have explored the relationship between Mozart and the city of Mannheim, which he visited several times. This Deutsche Grammophon release by the Freiburger Barockorchester and conductor/violinist Gottfried von der Golz may be the best of them. The annotations refer to how Mozart basked in the high regard in which he was held in Mannheim and to how impressed he was with the famed court orchestra there. However, after hearing this release, the listener may be tempted to go even further and assert that the music of Mannheim exerted a strong influence on Mozart in the late 1770s. The entire first half of the program here consists of world premieres, and all of them sound Mozartian. Why? Most of them point toward the big-boned movement structures Mozart loved, even if they don't expand them as far as Mozart would later in his career. Consider the first movement of Christian Cannabich's Symphony No. 55 in C major, with its long passages that move only slowly off the home key; one can hear any number of Mozart movements as proceeding from this idea, and one also wants to hear some more of the numerous and almost completely unplayed symphonies of Cannabich. Even less known are the Mannheim composers Georg Joseph Vogler, Christian Danner, and Carl Joseph Toeschi, and their contributions are eminently listenable. Mozart wraps the program up with a recitative and aria and the unnumbered Symphony in C major, K. 208, assembled by the composer from other music; it absolutely fits in here. The performances are idiomatic, and the sound is excellent. A valuable contribution from von der Goltz and company that landed on classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Stravinsky: Violin Concerto & Chamber Works
Isabelle Faust
Classical - Released March 3, 2023 | harmonia mundi
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4F de Télérama
Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in D major of 1931 has always been a troublesome work, perhaps less often programmed than any other violin concerto by one of the generally acclaimed great composers. However, that situation may well change with this release by violinist Isabelle Faust and the historically oriented ensemble Les Siècles, playing instruments of the early 20th century, which hit classical best-seller lists in early 2023. Les Siècles have been better known for French music, but the group started out with Stravinsky, who, of course, was working in Paris when he wrote this music, and the effect of their technique in his works is really revelatory. The neoclassical Violin Concerto, hard to grasp in a mushy modern-instrument performance, comes alive in the reading by Les Siècles and leader François-Xavier Roth, where the period winds emerge and enter into lively dialogue with the violin. The group is a perfect match for Faust, whose gut strings vividly outline the big space defined by the violin's opening material. Her sound, wiry and lively, is also impressive in the shorter pieces that fill out the program as she shifts gears from concerto soloist to string quartet leader in the radical Three Pieces for String Quartet of 1914, an unclassifiable work unlike anything else Stravinsky wrote (imagine string quartet miniatures in the vein of The Rite of Spring). Harmonia Mundi's studio sound serves the musicians well in this bracing, fresh Stravinsky release.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Spontini: La vestale
Les Talens Lyriques
Classical - Released May 12, 2023 | Bru Zane
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Gaspare's Spontini's French-language La Vestale is probably the most often heard of his operas, but that is not saying much; the work was sung by Maria Callas in the 1950s, but performances are sparse. Here, it is revived in period style by Les Talens Lyriques and conductor Christophe Rousset, and a very good case is made for further attention. The story is action-packed; Julia, in the absence of her lover, General Licinius, becomes una Vestale, a Vestal Virgin and guards a sacred flame. When Licinius returns to town, the flame goes out, and Julia is sentenced to be buried alive. Licinius rallies his troops, vowing to kidnap Julia, and the flame is reignited later by a lightning strike. Spontini's orchestration of this tale is Beethovenian in its dimensions, and despite the difficulties of natural horns, it is exciting to hear this opera as Napoleon (thought to be the model for Licinius) and Josephine (who backed the opera) heard it. The singers are not Callas-level, but throughout, and especially in the choruses, there is a commitment to the text and its meaning that is rare in any kind of recording. Marina Rebeka, in the role of Julia, is fully involved in the character's plight, and the smoky-voiced Aude Extrémo as La Grande Vestale is worth the price of admission on her own. The singers are aided by clear, spacious studio sound engineering from the early opera specialist label Palazzetto Bru Zane, whose high standards are perhaps even exceeded here.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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