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Les Petits Mouchoirs

HATARI

Electronic - Released May 22, 2022 | 33 sound system chenaux

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Les petits mouchoirs (Bande originale du film)

Various Artists

Film Soundtracks - Released October 25, 2010 | Europacorp

Tirer la nuit sur les étoiles

Étienne Daho

French Music - Released May 12, 2023 | Universal Music Division Barclay

Distinctions 4F de Télérama - Qobuz Album of the Week
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A LA SALA

Khruangbin

Alternative & Indie - Released April 5, 2024 | Dead Oceans

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Khruangbin's  A LA SALA is billed as a return to basics. Made with minimal overdubs and in only the company of the band's longtime engineer Steve Christensen, the mostly-instrumental trio's fourth record is a quieter, more introspective affair. The measured first track "Fifteen Fifty-Three," which starts with crickets and ends with birds chirping, sets the tone for an album where several tunes include ambient or found sounds. In the sweet and gentle flow of "May Ninth," bassist Laura Lee Ochoa quietly sings, "Oh what a dream to me/ Memory burned and gone/ A multicolored grey/ Waiting for May to come/ Happy for the rain." Her whispers can be heard in several tracks including "Pon Pón," a classic example of the instinctual way that the trio mind meld into a groove—here spiced with a dash of West African bounce.Khruangbin have routinely sought out vocal collaborators (like fellow Texan Leon Bridges) but have now mastered the art of adding ghostly, often near wordless  background vocals.  Lee purrs in the sinuous "Todaviá Viva," a funk jam paced by drummer Donald "DJ" Johnson's rim shots and high hat.  "Hold Me Up (Thank You)" is firmly in the pocket from the opening notes, with Speer darting in and a more assertive Lee singing simple lyrics that conclude with, "Thank your father, thank your mother/Hold me up." With his instantly recognizable guitar tone always submerged in reverb, Mark Speer continues to refine his playing, trending more towards the jazz improvisations while also being able to savor shorter, less challenging moments like in "Caja de la Sala."  He stretches a solo into a song in the dance track "A Love International."  A LA SALA (a phrase Lee used as a child to summon her family into the same place) closes on the slow, reflective "Les Petits Gris," set to a repeated keyboard phrase before it dissolves into the sound of crickets in full thrall.  Khruangbin continue to find new ways to make instrumental-centered music consequential. © Robert Baird/Qobuz
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Paysage

Véronique Gens

Classical - Released March 15, 2024 | Alpha Classics

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The soprano voice of Véronique Gens aged nicely into French Romantic music from the Baroque works in which she specialized for the first part of her career, and by 2024 when this album appeared on classical best-seller lists, she seemed unable to do wrong. Not only is she still in splendid voice, but the album has the feel of a program she pulled together and fully controlled. Not that the role of conductor Hervé Niquet (another Baroque specialist) and the Munich Radio Orchestra is minimized; the orchestra gets several instrumental interludes alone, and they are done with lush grace. Sample the "Solitude" section from Massenet's Sapho, but it is Gens who confidently steps from one piece to another, giving the whole the flavor of a little drama of which the subject remains unknown. There are some familiar composers, such as Fauré, Gounod, and Reynaldo Hahn, one of whose songs lends the album its title. However, Gens also delves into the much less familiar Théodore Dubois, who is in the books as a church composer and as director of the Conservatoire de Paris, but hardly at all for songs. Sample the charming pair of Petits rêves d'enfant ("Little Dreams of a Child"). The Alpha label (working with the neglected-repertory specialists Palazzetto Bru Zane) contributes nicely balanced, transparent sound from a Bayerischer Rundfunk studio, and here, as so often lately, the best advice is to enjoy this golden age of Gens' voice.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Mon amant de Saint-Jean

Le Poème Harmonique

Classical - Released August 25, 2023 | Alpha Classics

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This release showed up on classical best-seller charts in the late summer of 2023, perhaps because it represented a genuinely original experiment. Mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac, the small ensemble Le Poème Harmonique, and conductor and theorbist suggest... well, what, exactly? That there is an affinity between French popular song and French and Italian music of the 17th century? Not quite, although there were intriguing connections between popular song, outlined in the booklet, and the very earliest stages of the historical performance movement at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The program is organized into three sections, "Jeunesse," "Les vieux airs," and "Les amours passées," but the 20th century songs and the 17th century pieces mostly don't overlap within these groups; "Les amours passées" are all popular songs. The program makes quite a lurch between an excerpt from Cavalli's L'Egisto and Paul Marinier's D'elle à lui, and the lurch would have been even greater if the popular songs hadn't been chosen to exclude any hints of African-American-influenced song. Léon Fossey's Les canards tyroliens, a kind of yodeling song about ducks, simply doesn't inhabit the same universe as Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna. Perhaps it would be best to say, as the publicity does, that there are "echoes" between the two traditions, and d'Oustrac plainly has enthusiasm for both repertories; her personality is largely enough to carry the listener through. There is definitely a need for programming and performance that mixes classical and popular material, which have never been as far apart as they have been made out to be. This release may not be a definitive solution, but it is an intriguing and listenable attempt. © James Manheim /TiVo

Tirer la nuit sur les étoiles - Only For You

Étienne Daho

French Music - Released December 8, 2023 | Universal Music Division Barclay

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60 Comptines pour Enfants et Bébés

La Reine des chansons pour enfants et bébés

Children - Released February 21, 2018 | La Reine des chansons pour enfants et bébés

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50 ans de chansons

Henri Dès

Children - Released October 27, 2014 | PRODUCTIONS MARY JOSEE

Booklet
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Louis Beydts: Mélodies & Songs

Cyrille Dubois

Mélodies - Released March 15, 2024 | Aparté

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The aged Fauré and Reynaldo Hahn took the French Romantic mélodie into the 20th century, and Louis Beydts, who studied with Hahn, took it even further; three of the song cycles here date from after World War II. Beydts was mostly known as a composer of film music, and the songs on this release by tenor Cyrille Dubois and pianist Tristan Raës are all but unknown; three of the cycles receive their world premieres here. The music may seem to evoke a vanished world, but it is often engaging. Beydts distills the Fauré style down to essences, and most of the songs are quite short. The texts are by a variety of French poets of the day, and physical album buyers will get good translations in the hefty booklet. The Cinq Humoresques are sharp little character studies, and in many of the songs, there is a measure of wit (sample "Mademoiselle Rose"). The songs often take the conversational tone of Fauré's songs and dial it down several notches. Dubois has a nicely controlled tone in very quiet material (which describes many of the songs), letting the vibrato drain from his voice but not going flat. Hear "Adonis" for a good example of his comfort with the musical language. The Chansons pour les oiseaux are delightful and could easily be programmed with other works about animals. These are subtle little pieces, but they are immensely appealing, and it is no surprise that the album made classical best-seller charts in the spring of 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo
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François Couperin : Pièces de Clavecin

Blandine Verlet

Chamber Music - Released May 21, 2012 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Pianiste Maestro - Choc de Classica - Qobuzissime
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Louis de Caix d'Hervelois, in the footsteps of Marin Marais

La Rêveuse

Classical - Released October 22, 2021 | harmonia mundi

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Recorded in the inspiring settings of the Château de Chambord in 2020, this album does justice to Louis de Caix d'Hervelois, whose career, like Watteau's paintings and Marivaux's plays, began in the eighteenth century. His elegance, lightness and delicate eroticism can still impart a certain frisson in an age when seriousness and constraints of all kinds have rather displaced a certain joie de vivre.Likely a pupil of Marin Marais, Caix d'Hervelois wrote and published extensively for the viola da gamba, an instrument that was in the final stages of its development and would shortly be supplanted by the cello, which was more sonorous and easier to play. He left a considerable legacy in stone as well as in music, which he taught to a great many pupils. A totally independent musician, which was very rare at the time, he made his living from tutoring the bourgeoisie of Paris, from his publications and, above all, it seems, from his real estate investments: for this excellent musician was also a formidable businessman.At first, his style was inspired by that of his master Marin Marais. But it evolved in a new direction, oriented towards lightness and virtuosity. In hushed salons, listeners came to be intoxicated by the original and playful harmonies of this Picard who had come to Paris seeking fame and fortune. The delicacy of his music and the modesty of his art still touch listeners today, especially since the musicians of the ensemble La Rêveuse, led by Florence Bolton on viol and Benjamin Perrot on continuo, bring consummate artistry to bear on this characterful example of fine French art. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Au Palais des Sports

Daniel Balavoine

French Music - Released December 1, 1984 | Universal Music Division Barclay

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Sans attendre

Céline Dion

French Music - Released November 2, 2012 | Columbia

Hi-Res Distinctions The Qobuz Ideal Discography
For her first album in five years, Céline Dion returns to her native French, cutting a moody collection called Sans Attendre. Perhaps it is the relatively diminished commercial expectations of a French-only album but there's an appealing small-scale aspect to Sans Attendre; certainly it is melodramatic but it is not garishly bombastic. The production is relatively restrained and, in turn, it gives plenty of space for Dion to grandstand on these tales of heartbreak, aging, and death. These aren't songs of love; they're songs of loss, and while there is certainly an affectation to Dion's performance, there's also genuine pathos and the small scale of Sans Attendre makes for one of her better albums of recent memory.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo
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Henri Dès en 25 chansons

Henri Dès

Children - Released October 15, 2012 | PRODUCTIONS MARY JOSEE

Booklet
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Caravane

Raphaël

Pop - Released March 14, 2005 | Parlophone (France)

Distinctions Victoire de la musique
French heartthrob Raphael (that's Raphael Haroche, not to be confused with the veteran Spanish singer Rafael Martos, who goes by the same name) continues to soften his sound on his third album, Caravane. A longtime admirer of David Bowie, he's brought in two of Bowie's former sidemen, pianist Mike Garson, who plays piano on "La Route de Nuit," and guitarist Carlos Alomar, who plays throughout. Those musicians played with Bowie in the mid- and late '70s, but Raphael's musical approach here is somewhat closer to the early-'70s Bowie of Hunky Dory (though the album's concluding instrumental, "Funambule," is a child of Bowie's 1977 anthem "'Heroes'"). He is somewhat less theatrical than his mentor, but also likes to mix his voice way upfront. Since his lyrics are simple and sentimental (though effectively put across by his expressive tenor), he is easily understood whether he's singing about good times ("C'est Bon Aujourd'Hui") or eulogizing an actor who died young ("Chanson pour Patrick Dewaere"). Even English speakers with a little French (or high school students studying the language) are likely to have little trouble getting the gist of his messages, and even those who don't will appreciate the melodic pop/rock sound © William Ruhlmann /TiVo
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Le Meilleur De

Françoise Hardy

French Music - Released July 15, 1997 | Wagram Music

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Henri Dès, Vol. 1: Cache-cache

Henri Dès

Children - Released July 18, 1977 | PRODUCTIONS MARY JOSEE

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Rameau & Couperin: Pièces pour clavier

Clément Lefebvre

Classical - Released May 18, 2018 | Evidence (LTR)

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For his first record, the young French pianist Clément Lefebvre has selected Couperin and Rameau, whom he presents here in the very original form of an expressive journey through a single day, from morning to night. On the way, Lefebvre moves from one composer to another and playing on their suggestive titles, he underlines what unites and divides them with a subtle intelligence. Clément Lefebvre showed a keen interest in music from a young age. He started playing piano at the age of four, before discovering percussion. After studies and winning prizes in these two instruments at the Conservatoire de Lille, he decided to concentrate fully on the piano. Hortense Cartier-Bresson taught him at the Conservatoire de Boulogne-Billancourt and prepared him for the entrance competition for the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMD). Clément Lefebvre entered the prestigious institution in 2010 and learned with Roger Muraro, Isabelle Dubuis, Claire Désert, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and Alain Planès. He also received masterclasses from Philippe Bianconi, Xu Zhong, Michael Lewin, Christian Ivaldi, Emmanuel Strosser as well as from members of the Wanderer Trio. Clément Lefebvre won the First Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2016 James Mottram international piano competition in Manchester. A soloist, he also enjoys chamber music, whether with the Alban Berg Piano Quartet which he founded with a few friends, or as part of a duet with pianist Alexandre Leroy. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Amir

Henri Texier

Jazz - Released January 1, 1975 | JMS Productions