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Debussy: C'est l'extase - La mer
Vannina Santoni
Classical - Released June 9, 2023 | Alpha Classics
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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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Écho & Narcisse
Hervé Niquet
Classical - Released August 25, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles
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Des roses & des orties
Francis Cabrel
French Music - Released March 31, 2008 | Columbia
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A popular singer/songwriter in France for the past three decades, Francis Cabrel is also a bit of a pastoral recluse, preferring to spend his days with his family in his hometown village of Astaffort, rather than in the media spotlight of Paris. Unsurprisingly, his studio output has become less than prolific in recent years, with intervals of four or five years between records. His artistry and popularity, however, have not suffered in the least, as evident in 2008's Des Roses et Des Orties. The new songs offer few surprises for either Cabrel fans or detractors, other than a keener emphasis on social issues. This is also reflective of a general trend in France, where events such as the 2007 election of Sarkozy, or the heated debate on immigration, brought politics back to the forefront, both in the media and in everyday life. Cabrel, a father of two who recently adopted a Vietnamese child, is particularly sensitive to the plight of immigrant children, as well as to the ever widening gap between the richer and poorer regions of the planet, the subject of "African Tour," "Mademoiselle L'aventure," and "Les Cardinaux en Costume," among others. Furthermore, Cabrel criticizes institutionalized religion in "La Chêne Liège" and artists and songwriters like himself ("Des Gens Formidables") for feigning sympathy for the poor but doing very little about it. Most of the songs set Cabrel's soft spoken voice against his acoustic guitar, reinforced by bluesy electric guitar pickings, or stately piano accompaniment. A few tracks add a discreet ethnic flavor for variety, such as the tasteful flamenco guitar in the opening "La Robe et L'échelle." The inclusion of three covers, by Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and J.J. Cale, translated and sung in French by Cabrel, seems less fortunate as these songs feel somewhat out of place in the more somber context of this record. A typically well-crafted Cabrel album, Des Roses et Des Orties reached the top of the French charts upon its release.© Mariano Prunes /TiVo
Ici & là, en concert au Dôme de Paris (Live, 2022)
Alain Souchon
French Music - Released November 11, 2022 | Parlophone (France)
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Requiem pour un celte
Manau
Hip-Hop/Rap - Released November 21, 2023 | Tricoche Martial
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Chamouard: Symphonie No. 7 & Les rêves de l'ombre
Hungarian Symphony Orchestra
Classical - Released November 6, 2013 | HORTUS
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Avant que l'ombre...
Mylène Farmer
French Music - Released April 4, 2005 | Stuffed Monkey
Released six years after Innamoramento, Avant Que l'Ombre... is the eagerly awaited sixth studio album from Canadian-born French singer/songwriter Mylène Farmer. Adding a darker electronica edge to her trademark Euro-dance sound, the Laurent Boutonnat-produced LP tackles the subjects of sex, death, and religion in her own unique style, and includes the singles "Redonne-Moi," "L'Amour N'Est Rien," and "Peut-Etre Toi," alongside the controversial "Fuck Them All" and tributes to Serge Gainsbourg and Virginia Woolf.© Jon O'Brien /TiVo
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Origine
Yuston XIII
Hip-Hop/Rap - Released February 17, 2023 | Les Arcanes de l'ombre
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Handel: Finest Arias for Base (Bass) Voice, Vol. 1
Christopher Purves
Classical - Released December 2, 2012 | Hyperion
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There's no shortage of Handel aria recitals these days, especially in Britain, but this one by bass baritone Christopher Purves stands out from the crowd in several respects. First of all, it is rare in collecting arias for bass voice, which was, in Handel's time as it was later on, generally associated with a few fixed and generally negative character types (tyrants, rogues, repressive patriarchs). Second, it's a very pleasantly varied collection of tunes, including displays of brilliant passagework, out-of-the-norm writing in service of characterization (Fra l'ombre e gl'orrori, from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, track 4), and high climactic drama (the big, three-part Revenge, Timotheus cries, from Alexander's Feast, track 19, is a familiar example). Finally, Purves unearths some rarely heard pieces and programs them intelligently. When did anyone last year anything from Muzio Scevola, or Riccardo Primo, rè d'Inghilterra, which must have pleased London audiences in 1727 despite its Italian-language text. Purves does not have the biggest voice in the bass baritone universe, and there could be a bit more sound in the very low notes. But the dimensions of the music are right for the period. He's pleasingly accurate in the passagework, and he's a real actor who makes these potentially stilted characters come alive. Listeners will want to hear Purves in a small production of one of these operas after hearing this album, preferably accompanied by the strong historical-instrument group Arcangelo under Jonathan Cohen, as he is here.© TiVo
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Charpentier: David et Jonathas, H. 490
Les Pages du Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles
Opera - Released March 1, 2024 | Aparté
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Marc-Antoine Charpentier's David et Jonathas, setting the action-packed biblical story of Saul, has not often been recorded. William Christie and Les Arts Florissants fired the first shot in the late '90s, and there have been a few other attempts, but the work crosses categories -- not really an oratorio, with a limited role for the chorus, but not an opera in the conventional sense -- and this may have hurt it at the box office. The Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles specializes in music of this period, and Charpentier is certainly right up this outfit's alley. The recording was made at Versailles, but its strength is actually that it reproduces the circumstances of its origin, which occurred elsewhere, at a Jesuit school in Paris. The music was intended to alternate with scenes from a play; here, conductor Olivier Schneebeli opts for declaimed readings from poetry by the 17th century writer Antoine Godeau. The work was written for young singers, not only in the children's choir but also a child in the lead role of Jonathas, and Natacha Boucher has a great deal of flair here, certainly sounding like a future star. All the singers are either children or male adults. The music is continuous, and Charpentier's writing sometimes falls into melody or recitative but is most often somewhere in between, shifting naturally with the text. Some of it is quite vocally spectacular, however; sample "Quelle importune voix vient importune mon repos," Act I, scene 4, with its bass line descending to Russian-liturgical depths. Although the opera has five acts and a prologue, it goes by quickly; no doubt with the original use in mind, Charpentier's concept is compact. What is most attractive about the work is how opposite it is to the splendor and formality of Lully; the role of the chorus is limited, and the focus is squarely on the characters. Baroque opera lovers will find something new and intriguing here.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Persona (Nouvelle édition)
Bertrand Belin
French Music - Released February 1, 2019 | Wagram Music - Cinq 7
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Bijoux perdus
Jodie Devos
Classical - Released September 16, 2022 | Alpha Classics
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Choc de Classica
After her triumph with the album "Offenbach Colorature", Jodie Devos has chosen to follow in the footsteps of one of her compatriots, the Belgian coloratura soprano Marie Cabel (1827 -1885), who at the age of twenty-six scored a phenomenal success in Adolphe Adam’s opéra-comique Le Bijou perdu, which she premiered in Paris. She then took on a more dramatic role in Halévy’s Jaguarita l’Indienne, whose great Invocation with chorus ("À moi ma cohorte!") again hit the bullseye in a run of 124 performances over just a few months. Cabel enjoyed one hit after another, in Auber’s Manon Lescaut and La Part du diable, Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du Nord and Le Pardon de Ploërmel, Victor Massé’s Galathée, and Le Songe d’une nuit d’été by Ambroise Thomas, who in 1866 gave her the biggest role of her career: Philine in Mignon, based on Goethe. In partnership with the musicologists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, who have resurrected and edited all these unjustly forgotten rarities, and Pierre Bleuse conducting the Brussels Philharmonic and the Flemish Radio Choir, Jodie Devos pays tribute to this star of the nineteenth century, whose audacity and sense of mischief she undoubtedly shares! © Alpha Classics
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Meyerbeer: Robert le Diable
Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine
Classical - Released September 23, 2022 | Bru Zane
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Gramophone: Recording of the Month
For his last season at the helm of the Opéra de Bordeaux, Marc Minkowski—always keen to conduct forgotten works which have, in some way, marked the history of music—sets his sights on Robert le Diable, Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera which was a true social phenomenon in 19th century France. The Palazzetto Bru Zane - Centre de musique romantique française has followed suit by officially publishing this concert version, which also features some excellent vocal soloists. Admired by Balzac, Sand and Dumas, this ‘grand opéra à la française’ (great French opera) faded into obscurity after the First World War. Its creator became a sort of pariah – one met with both condescension and mockery. With its ‘seductive and haunting melodies’ (Alexandre Dratwicki), it’s nevertheless a flamboyant work that greatly inspired his contemporaries, such as Verdi, who referred to it in La Traviata. The extraordinary impact of Robert le Diable was such that it was performed a great many times on every continent. A true one-man band, Marc Minkowski has invested himself entirely in this undertaking, learning this vast score practically by heart and conducting it with his usual power and conviction. The international cast is full of surprises thanks to their deep understanding of the work and the protagonists’ fantastic pronunciation. This new release, to the credit of the Bru Zane label, revitalises our knowledge of this work that’s scarcely mentioned in specialised dictionaries. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Satie et les Gymnopédistes
François Mardirossian
Solo Piano - Released September 15, 2023 | Ad Vitam records
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Même pas sommeil
CharlElie Couture
French Music - Released January 25, 2019 | Rue bleue
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la Barque Ailée et l'Albatros ...quand s'envolent les mots...
Seven Reizh
Rock - Released May 19, 2023 | Seven Reizh
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Salle des pas perdus
Coralie Clément
French Music - Released October 19, 2001 | Bambi Rose
Salle des Pas Perdus is a soundtrack for a film that doesn't exist, but if it did, Coralie Clément says that the movie could be Jean-Luc Godard's 1959 A Bout de Souffle. And just as in the movie, Clément's debut record deftly moves between high art and pop culture, from classical arrangements to lushly orchestrated pop to bossa nova, all the while making winks toward '60s French pop. Coralie, in fact, sounds like a young Jane Birkin, and even the cover photo on the CD -- a timeless, stunningly beautiful, and melancholy Clément shot on a Paris street through a red filter -- evokes the artwork on records of such French chanteuses as Françoise Hardy. This album is a result of a collaborative effort that recalls the Serge Gainsbourg/Jane Birkin relationship: Each of the album's tunes was written and arranged by noted composer/writer/performer Benjamin Biolay, Coralie's brother. His themes range from the illusory nature of love ("La Mer Opale," a wistful love song about the moon and the sea, Biolay's trumpet accompanying his sister's almost-whispered vocals as waves wash in the background; theatrical, maybe even kitschy, but utterly lovely), samba ("Samba de Mon Coeur Qui Bat," a swank, loungy bossa nova that echoes Astrud Gilberto), and lighthearted debauchery ("Le Jazz et le Gin"). It is somehow all cohesive, each of the songs a self-contained vignette that pieces together the larger theme of the album. Fans of '60s French pop will feel that they've unearthed a buried jewel in this record.© Kim Reick Kunoff /TiVo
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D'une ombre à l'autre
Francis Cabrel
French Music - Released September 30, 1991 | Columbia
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Handel: Rodelinda
The English Concert
Classical - Released May 14, 2021 | Linn Records
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Handel's Rodelinda, regina de' Longobardi, HWV 19, was a hit at its first performance in 1725 and has dropped out of the repertory only during periods when all of Handel's operas did. It is absolutely loaded with great Handelian tunes and also has a more-than-coherent plot involving an imprisoned queen in a conquered Milan, the intrigue that swirls around her among her lustful conquerors, and her disguised husband, Bertarido, who attempts to rescue her. The lead role has drawn star sopranos from Joan Sutherland on down, but many listeners will be drawn to the singing here of Lucy Crowe, who really inhabits the role. She sang it with the Dutch National Opera, and here, she returns with convincing delivery that will keep listeners' heads out of the libretto. She is aided by the clean playing of the English Concert under Harry Bicket, who leads from the harpsichord, and a strong supporting cast, including the ideal Iestyn Davies as Bertarido. This performance was planned for the English Concert's annual live concert at Carnegie Hall in New York; that was canceled due to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, but Bicket and the group decided to record the opera instead, inaugurating a new series of Handel operas. The socially distanced playing and singing at St. John's Smith Square is a little rusty in spots, and the venue is somewhat airy for the music, but all in all, this is a Handel opera performance that makes one anxious for more of the same for the performers.© TiVo
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Georges & moi
Alexis HK
French Music - Released October 20, 2017 | La Familia
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