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Vertigo (Rameau - Royer)
Jean Rondeau
Classical - Released February 19, 2016 | Erato - Warner Classics
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Diapason d'or -
Choc de Classica
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Marin Marais: Folies d'Espagne, La Rêveuse & Other Works
Jean-Guihen Queyras
Duets - Released January 27, 2023 | harmonia mundi
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It is hard to shake the feeling that Alexandre Tharaud and Jean-Guihen Queyras are committing a radical crime of lèse-majesté here. However, this is soon forgotten after you hear the first bars of their new album. They are understandably enthralled with Marin Marais’ fabulous music, and have thus decided to put their own spin on it by transcribing it for their own instruments: a modern piano and cello.This joyful transgression is in keeping with the interpretations from the beginning of the last century, when Fritz Kreisler and his peers were not afraid to play—or even pastiche—the music they loved without any concern for historical accuracy. These two musicians, on the other hand, are ‘historically informed’. They’ve listened to Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Jordi Savall, Ton Koopman and Hopkinson Smith whilst recreating Marin Marais’ music in their own way, adapting it to instruments that would have been unknown to him.Under their nimble fingers, ‘Les Folies d’Espagne’ becomes a frantic dance, ‘Le Badinage’ sounds like something straight out of a Watteau painting, and ‘Opération de la taille’ is almost humorous. Here, Alexandre Tharaud and Jean-Guihen Queyras share their love for subtle and refined music, speaking to listeners on a level that goes beyond that of a mere reconstruction. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Debussy, Liszt & Rameau: Piano Works
Philippe Guilhon-Herbert
Chamber Music - Released November 20, 2020 | ARTALINNA
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This fourth publication by the French pianist Philippe Guilhon-Herbert on the Artalinna label was recorded during the same session as his second volume of Schubert, including Sonata D. 959. It sets forth a short history of the art of keyboard playing with three landmark composers, showing the fundamental role that nature plays in the evolution of forms and languages. © Artalinna
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Vertigo
Jean Rondeau
Classical - Released February 19, 2016 | Erato - Warner Classics
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N'espérez plus mes yeux... Airs sérieux et à boire, Vol. 3
William Christie
Art Songs, Mélodies & Lieder - Released April 30, 2021 | harmonia mundi
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With this third volume of "Airs sérieux et à boire", the ensemble Les Arts Florissants return to this genre whose refinement had marked the French musical landscape for over a hundred years. By turns gallant, earthy, or spiritual, these vocal miniatures, prized at the French court, ushered in a ground-breaking style which opened the door to an endless variety of interpretations. "One can hardly find enough praise for the individuality of these inspired performers, for their skill to make the music animate the words ( . . . ) as they display a joyful unity of purpose. A unique event!" (Opéra Magazine). © harmonia mundi
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Rameau: Complete Piano Music
Claudio Colombo
Classical - Released April 18, 2020 | iMD-Claudio Colombo
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Ludus Verbalis, Vol. 1
Ensemble Vocal Aedes
Classical - Released June 9, 2011 | Eloquentia
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Couperin: Complete Works for Harpsichord, I. L'Art de toucher le clavecin, 1er Ordre
Carole Cerasi
Chamber Music - Released October 19, 2018 | Metronome
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François Couperin was the most illustrious member of a dynasty of musicians comparable to that of the Bach family. There is every reason to believe that his name "Couperin the Great", first found in writing in 1780, had already been bestowed upon him during his lifetime to distinguish him from the other musicians in his family. In addition to his duties as the King's organist at Versailles, Couperin taught the harpsichord to many students from the royal family and the ranks of the nobility and, at the turn of the century, he was as active a composer as he was a performer. His work for harpsichord represents the most prominent part of his musical production with his pedagogical work L'Art de toucher le clavecin, or “The Art of Playing the Harpsichord” in English. The work was published in 1716 and deals with ornamentation, fingering, the general position of the body, – particularly focusing on the wrists - the touch, the character of the instrument, and so on. Also from this fruitful period we find his twenty-seven "orders" - a term he used to refer to a group of pieces with similar tonalities, halfway between a suite and an anthology. The work is divided into four volumes, published between 1713 and 1730. He develops a world of poetic fantasy that takes on the form of simple dance movements, portraits, "character pieces", pastoral paintings or theatrical miniatures. Here the Swedish harpsichordist Carole Cerasi offers us the complete works, spread over ten albums including L'Art de toucher le clavecin and the four Books, which she distributes over six different harpsichords. The first volume opens with L'art, which Cerasi performs on an Antwerp Ruckers model from 1624; it continues with the First Book which also covers the second and third volumes. This book contains five orders; it was published in 1713, although several of the pieces it contains had been written years earlier. For the First Book , Carole Cerasi plays an Antwerp harpsichord by Andreas Ruckers, built in 1636 and reworked in 1763 in Paris by Henri Hemsch, giving a Franco-Flemish sound! © SM/Qobuz
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Bach: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2 - Partita No. 1
Hilary Hahn
Violin Solos - Released October 5, 2018 | Decca Music Group Ltd.
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Gramophone: Recording of the Month
A student of the last student of Ysaÿe, American violinist Hilary Hahn has played Bach's solo violin music since she was nine, and inaugurated her recording career seven years later with a recording of half the cycle of six, in 1997. That recording rightly won acclaim with its flawless technique and Apollonian lines straight out of the best of the French violin school. Uniquely, she has returned to complete the set 21 years later, and the results are marvelous. It's sometimes hard to pin down the ways in which Hahn's style has changed, but it has to do with a kind of inner relaxation, with a willingness to let the meter vary a bit and pick it up again in the longer line. The flawless tone is still there, but it's not so much an end in itself. It's not an accident that some of the graphics picture Hahn smiling, nor that her quite relevant notes to the album detail the long creative process that went into making it. Sample anywhere, but you could try the very beginning, the first movement of the Sonata for solo violin No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001, where Hahn takes just a bit of time, draws you in, and lets the rest of the movement flow from there. Decca's engineers do excellent work in a Bard College auditorium that one might not have picked as a venue for this. A superb release from one of the preeminent violinists of our time.© TiVo
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Gorillaz
Gorillaz
Pop - Released April 24, 2001 | Parlophone UK
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It's tempting to judge Gorillaz -- Damon Albarn, Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett, and Dan "The Automator" Nakamura's virtual band -- just by their brilliantly animated videos and write the project off as another triumph of style over substance. Admittedly, Hewlett's edgy-cute characterizations of 2-D, Gorillaz' pretty boy singer (who looks a cross between the Charlatans' Tim Burgess and Sonic the Hedgehog), sinister bassist Murdoc, whiz-kid guitarist Noodle, and b-boy drummer Russel are so arresting that they almost detract from Gorillaz' music. The amazing "Thriller"-meets-Planet of the Apes clip for "Clint Eastwood" is so visually clever that it's easy to take the song's equally clever, hip-hop-tinged update of the Specials' "Ghost Town" for granted. And initially, Gorillaz' self-titled debut feels incomplete when Hewlett's imagery is removed; the concept of Gorillaz as a virtual band doesn't hold up as well when you can't see the virtual bandmembers. It's too bad that there isn't a DVD version of Gorillaz, with videos for every song, à la the DVD version of Super Furry Animals' Rings Around the World. Musically, however, Gorillaz is a cutely caricatured blend of Albarn's eclectic Brit-pop and Nakamura's equally wide-ranging hip-hop, and it sounds almost as good as the band looks. Albarn has fun sending up Blur's cheeky pop on songs like "5/4" and "Re-Hash," their trip-hop experiments on "New Genious" and "Sound Check," and "Song 2"-like thrash-pop on "Punk" and "M1 A1." Despite the similarities between Albarn's main gig and his contributions here, Gorillaz isn't an Albarn solo album in disguise; Nakamura's bass- and beat-oriented production gives the album an authentically dub and hip-hop-inspired feel, particularly on "Rock the House" and "Tomorrow Comes Today." Likewise, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Miho Hatori, and Ibrahim Ferrer's vocals ensure that it sounds like a diverse collaboration rather than an insular side project. Instead, it feels like a musical vacation for all parties involved -- a little self-indulgent, but filled with enough fun ideas and good songs to make this virtual band's debut a genuinely enjoyable album.© Heather Phares /TiVo
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Brahms, Viotti & Dvořák: Orchestral Works
Christian Tetzlaff
Classical - Released October 6, 2023 | Ondine
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All of the principals here were close associates of the late pianist Lars Vogt, and this Ondine release, which landed on classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023, is intended as a tribute to him. Vogt loved Brahms, and the main attraction is a performance of the Double Concerto in A minor for violin, cello, and orchestra, Op. 102, by Christian Tetzlaff, Tanja Tetzlaff, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under the usually somewhat cerebral conductor Paavo Järvi, who turns in quite a passionate performance here. The Double Concerto is structured unlike anything else Brahms (or really anyone else) ever wrote, opening with quasi-improvisatory passages in the cello and then the violin that are reconciled and brought within a Classical structure as the movement proceeds. The Tetzlaffs, in an interview-format booklet, suggest that the opening represents the feuding Brahms and violinist Joseph Joachim, for whom the concerto was meant as a kind of peace offering. Whatever the actual case, the idea results in a performance of considerable tension. Also figuring into the biographical interpretation is the inclusion of Giovanni Battista Viotti's Violin Concerto No. 22 in A minor, which at first glance may seem an odd pairing. The work was a favorite of both Brahms and Viotti, and hints of Viotti's music seem to recur in the Brahms concerto, again as a kind of peace offering or, it has been suggested, a subconscious reference. The album ends with a warm performance by Tanja Tetzlaff of Silent Woods from Dvořák's From the Bohemian Forest, Op. 68, not directly connected to the biographical theme but full of a spirit of calm reconciliation. It is a fine conclusion to a powerful album.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Bach Triple
Frank Theuns
Classical - Released March 22, 2024 | Ramée
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Biber: The Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber
Classical - Released March 24, 2023 | Prospero Classical
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Vêpres romaines
Ensemble Jacques Moderne
Classical - Released October 6, 2023 | Mirare
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Chopin: Double intégrale des valses
Yves Henry
Classical - Released May 26, 2023 | Soupir Editions - DN
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Bach : Sei Solo - The Sonatas and Partitas
Thomas Zehetmair
Classical - Released November 15, 2019 | ECM New Series
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5 de Diapason
Composed three centuries ago, Johann Sebastian Bach’s set of six works for solo violin stands as one of the holy grails of the instrument’s literature – perhaps the holiest. Now the great Austrian musician Thomas Zehetmair makes his own mark in the rich history of this music, revisiting the repertoire on period instruments. Zehetmair is an extraordinary violinist and a consistently inquisitive and self-questioning artist. He has not only played the big concertos but has given close attention to chamber music and new repertory, and has also found an extra calling as a conductor, channeling this varied experience into his return to the formidable cornerstone of Bach’s solo masterpieces. As a young man Zehetmair worked with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in his period ensemble, working with him to prepare for his first recording of the sonatas and partitas on a modern instrument. For this new recording, he draws out exquisite colours from two violins from Bach’s lifetime, both of them by masters in the German tradition, but there is nothing antiquarian in his approach – old instruments, for him, are tools with which to express a modern sensibility: alert, edgy, multivalent. His performance engages, too, with the superb acoustic of the priory church of St Gerold, in Austria where so many legendary ECM recordings have been made. Peter Gülke, in his accompanying essay, refers to the “floating spirituality” of this music, and to how Bach here offers one side of a conversation with the performer, whom he leaves free to determine matters of dynamic shading, phrasing and bowing. Zehetmair brings vividness and intelligence to the conversation on a recording that, deeply steeped in the music and true, is at the same time powerfully original. © ECM New Series
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Pacific Rim (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Ramin Djawadi
Film Soundtracks - Released July 8, 2013 | WaterTower Music
Booklet
A movie as big and ridiculous as Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro's epic reimagining of Japanese kaiju films, needs a soundtrack that's just as overblown as the action that's on-screen. Fortunately, the film can look to the talents of composer Ramin Djawadi, whose guitar-driven score mixes just the right amount of classic orchestral scoring, electronic music, and guitar-driven rock to create the perfect backdrop for the near future film about the epic battle between giant monsters from another world and the massive robots humanity constructs to combat them. While the score might feel a bit overdone on its own, it feels right at home with the larger-than-life action taking place on the big screen.© Gregory Heaney /TiVo
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Hilary Hahn plays Bach: Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2; Partita No. 1
Hilary Hahn
Classical - Released October 5, 2018 | Decca Music Group Ltd.
Booklet
A student of the last student of Ysaÿe, American violinist Hilary Hahn has played Bach's solo violin music since she was nine, and inaugurated her recording career seven years later with a recording of half the cycle of six, in 1997. That recording rightly won acclaim with its flawless technique and Apollonian lines straight out of the best of the French violin school. Uniquely, she has returned to complete the set 21 years later, and the results are marvelous. It's sometimes hard to pin down the ways in which Hahn's style has changed, but it has to do with a kind of inner relaxation, with a willingness to let the meter vary a bit and pick it up again in the longer line. The flawless tone is still there, but it's not so much an end in itself. It's not an accident that some of the graphics picture Hahn smiling, nor that her quite relevant notes to the album detail the long creative process that went into making it. Sample anywhere, but you could try the very beginning, the first movement of the Sonata for solo violin No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001, where Hahn takes just a bit of time, draws you in, and lets the rest of the movement flow from there. Decca's engineers do excellent work in a Bard College auditorium that one might not have picked as a venue for this. A superb release from one of the preeminent violinists of our time.© TiVo
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Chansons et madrigaux de la Renaissance avec leur double orné par Bassano
Michel Corboz
Classical - Released May 19, 2023 | Warner Classics
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