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Jolivet: Complete Works for Flute, Vol. 1

Hélène Boulègue

Classical - Released February 8, 2019 | Naxos

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So Romantique !

Cyrille Dubois

Classical - Released March 10, 2023 | Alpha Classics

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Maurice Yvain: Yes!

Les Frivolités Parisiennes

Classical - Released March 22, 2024 | Alpha Classics

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Paradise Lost

Anna Prohaska

Classical - Released April 10, 2020 | Alpha Classics

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The gestation of this project lasted two years. Anna Prohaska and Julius Drake finally concentrated their research on the themes of Eve, Paradise and banishment. Some songs were obvious choices, such as Fauré’s Paradis, in which God appears to Eve and asks her to name each flower and animal, or Purcell’s Sleep, Adam, sleep with its references to Genesis. But Anna Prohaska also wished to illustrate the cliché of the woman who brought original sin into the world and her status as a tempter who leads man astray, as in Brahms’s Salamander, Wolf’s Die Bekehrte or Ravel’s Air du Feu. In Das Paradies und die Peri, Schumann conjures up the image of Syria’s rose-covered plains. Bernstein also transports us to the desert with Silhouette.. John Milton’s seventeenth-century masterpiece Paradise Lost was the inspiration for Charles Ives and Benjamin Britten, also featured in this very rich programme that constitutes an invitation to travel and reflection. © Alpha Classics
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Rameau: Pygmalion & Les Fêtes de Polymnie

Christophe Rousset

Classical - Released September 1, 2017 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone: Recording of the Month - Choc de Classica - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Jazz
Christophe Rousset and the Talens Lyriques bring us to the stage of the Royal Academy of Music where Pygmalion, an act of ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau inspired by an episode of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was created in 1748. Love, showing empathy for Pygmalion’s despair of loving a statue, invigorates the sculpted woman who immediately falls in love with her creator. Very suggestive, the music of this tender and mischievous ballet deploys the grace of 18th century dances. Like Ovid’s Love, Christophe Rousset instils life in this score, one of Rameau’s greatest successes in his day, and offers us, thanks to his sense of drama and his impeccable leadership, a new and essential reading of this ballet. © Aparté
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Lekeu : Les fleurs pâles du souvenir (Complete Works)

Luc Devos

Classical - Released August 21, 2015 | Ricercar

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Marin Marais : Sémelé

Hervé Niquet

Full Operas - Released January 1, 2007 | Glossa

Marin Marais (1656-1728), the subject of the popular 1991 film Tous les matins du monde, is best known today for his music for gamba, but he was prolific in a variety of genres and wrote some of the most important French operas between Lully and Rameau. Because of its dramatic weakness, Sémélé (1709) was not among his most successful works, but the music, here reconstructed by Gérard Geay, is hugely attractive, and hearing the score is perhaps the most satisfying way to experience it. The fact that Marais uses recitative very judiciously, reserving it for the moments where the drama is most heightened, makes the opera especially effective on CD. In its place, he writes short arias and ensembles that have a strong inherent musical interest, so there are few dull moments in Sémélé. In spite of the opera's weak story, it's clear Marais was a master of writing for the stage; each act is beautifully shaped and structured. Some of the most effective parts are the orchestral sections -- dances, marches, chaconnes -- whose surprising originality and brilliant instrumentation make them pop out in bold relief from the vocal textures. Throughout, Marais' writing is graceful and inventive, making Sémélé an appealing work that should be of strong interest to fans of Baroque opera. The elegance and spirit of the performances are ideally suited to the opera. Le Concert Spirituel, an ensemble using original instruments, founded and conducted by Hervé Niquet, performs with the utmost precision and with terrific energy. The soloists are uniformly fine, with strong, clear, heroic voices, and agile coloratura, and they make the most of the drama of their roles. The recording is immaculate: clean and bright, with a good sense of presence. © TiVo
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Psyché

Christophe Rousset

Classical - Released January 13, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Don Quichotte Chez La Duchesse

Hervé Niquet

Classical - Released September 23, 2022 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Choc de Classica - Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik
In 1743, two years before Rameau’s Platée, Boismortier created an extraordinarily modern and madcap "comic ballet", Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse. As the exuberant plotunfurls, Cervantes’ hero encounters monsters, enchanters, princesses and people from Japan, making for plenty of offbeat and audacious dances and choruses. Musical beautyrubs shoulders with satirical and irreverent comedy. A choice work for Hervé Niquet, who leads his Concert Spirituel with unparalleled energy! © Château de Versailles Spectacles
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Debussy: Complete Orchestral Work

Jun Märkl

Classical - Released January 30, 2012 | Naxos

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Ravel : Boléro, Rapsodie espagnole, Ma mère l'Oye

Pierre Boulez

Classical - Released October 14, 2016 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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Debussy : Complete Works for Piano

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

Classical - Released October 1, 2012 | Chandos

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
Praised for his meticulous fidelity to the composer's intentions, as well as for his rich tonal palette and the warmth of his expressions, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has won many admirers for his five albums of the complete solo piano music of Claude Debussy. These recordings were produced by Chandos between 2007 and 2009, and they have now been gathered into a handsome box set; each disc is presented with its own cardboard sleeve and the original liner notes that accompanied each release. The roster of artists who have recorded Debussy's keyboard music is a long and distinguished one, though Bavouzet is easily ranked in the upper echelons, equal in stature among such luminaries as Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Krystian Zimerman, Maurizio Pollini, Angela Hewitt, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and Pascal Rogé. Experienced listeners will already have favorite recordings of the Préludes, Images, Estampes, and Études, as well as the perennially popular Suite bergamasque, Children's Corner, and other picturesque pieces. However, many will be won over by the consistency of Bavouzet's playing, and newcomers will find that his disciplined yet gorgeous readings are a great way to begin appreciating these charming classics. Chandos provides excellent sound that gives the piano a clear presence yet takes nothing away from Bavouzet's atmospheric colors or the radiant acoustics. Highly recommended.© TiVo
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David & Jonathas

Gaétan Jarry

Classical - Released June 9, 2023 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

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Après un rêve (Belle Époque: Nights at the Piano)

Emmanuel Despax

Classical - Released June 16, 2023 | Signum Records

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It is hard to figure out what pianist Emmanuel Despax had in mind for the concept of this album. Its various titles offer three ideas: Après un rêve comes from the title of a Fauré song Despax transcribes for his program opener, plus there is "Belle Époque: Nights at the Piano." None of these is of much use; few pieces other than the Fauré are particularly dreamy, and the largest piece, Poulenc's Soirées de Nazelles, is from the nervous 1930s and nowhere near the Belle Époque in time or mood. As for "Nights at the Piano," that fits the Poulenc nicely but not the concluding Gaspard de la Nuit of Ravel, which is an imposing virtuoso concert work carrying none of the connotations of "Nights at the Piano." Really, Despax excels in none of these three ways but rather in a fourth: he hits on an intriguing mix of familiar standards and unusual works. Among the latter group are the Soirées de Nazelles, which Poulenc disclaimed and, perhaps for that reason, have been seldom heard. They are delightful pieces that bear titles describing qualities, like the numbers of a Baroque French suite, but actually seem to have been devised by Poulenc to describe members of a group of his friends, like Elgar's Enigma Variations. The result is a work that distills the hint of improvisation that pervades some of Poulenc's keyboard music and songs, and Despax gives it the right lively, spontaneous feel. The Nocturne, Op. 165, of Cécile Chaminade and the keyboard version of Henri Duparc's Aux étoiles are also nice finds. As for the more heavily trodden works, Debussy's Clair de lune is pleasantly moody, although no one would select this album for the rote Gaspard de la Nuit or the rather un-macabre Danse Macabre, Op. 40, of Saint-Saëns. For Poulenc lovers, however, this is an important find. © James Manheim /TiVo
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Fauré: Requiem - Poulenc: Figure Humaine - Debussy: 3 Chansons

Mathieu Romano

Masses, Passions, Requiems - Released March 1, 2019 | Aparté

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 4F de Télérama
Fauré's Requiem, “funeral lullaby” written for enjoyment as the composer put it, has a unique place in history. It's soft, simple and modest poetry conveys moments of gentle contemplation and moving expressiveness which are entrusted to both the choir and the two soloists. With his Ensemble Aedes and the orchestra Les Siècles, Mathieu Romano is committed to render a Requiem faithful to its first performance. We hear thus the score in its original 1893 orchestration, where the organ plays a great role, and where Latin is pronounced in the French way as it used to be. The clearest articulation of the Ensemble Aedes then perfectly fits Éluard’s Figure humaine set to music by Francis Poulenc. We have never heard these sublime poems sung with such intelligibility before! Finally, the three Songs by Debussy elegantly close the album. Here again, the quality and clarity of the voices are stunning. Artistic director and founder of Ensemble Aedes has established himself as a magician of voices in a cappella scores. And voices ideally melt with the strings of Les Siècles under his baton. A 100% French cast in a 100% French music disc for a triple rediscovery. Essential! © Aparté
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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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Stravinsky: L'Oiseau de feu; Feu d'artifice; 4 Etudes

Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO)

Classical - Released July 7, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

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Ravel: Ma Mère l'Oye, Tombeau de Couperin, Shéhérazade

Les Siècles

Symphonic Music - Released April 13, 2018 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
Recording Ravel's music on period instruments is the kind of thing that might raise a smile... until you realise just how much the production of instruments has changed in less than a hundred years: it's the return of catgut strings, skin drum heads, the French basson (and not the German system bassoon which is used across all the world's orchestras today), shaper tips, trumpets and trombones of French manufacture. At the head of his orchestra Les Siècles, François-Xavier Roth gives a new, orthodox, historically-informed version of Ma Mère l’oye (complete ballet), the Tombeau de Couperin and Shéhérazade, the long-neglected "ouverture de féérie" [Fairy Overture] which is pure Ravel. This return to the roots is clearly easier and more straightforwardly authentic for this period of music history, because, unlike earlier works, we possess recordings which date back to the 1920s, and even earlier, which can tell us about the style, the colours, the phrasing and the tempo. But it isn't enough just to have all this historical information to hand to make something interesting. What makes this record thrilling is that all the musicians in the Siècles are excellent, and François-Xavier Roth is a talented artist himself, who knows this music inside out. At which point, his complete recording of Stravinsky's Firebird has already struck us with its quality. This rediscovery of Ravel resounds with clarity and finesse; it is a feast of well-defined timbres which cuts against the "beautiful sound" which prevails in orchestras around the world today. © François Hudry/Qobuz
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Stephane Deneve conducts Debussy

Stéphane Denève

Symphonies - Released May 1, 2012 | Chandos

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Stéphane Denève has established himself as a versatile maestro with a highly varied repertoire, from concert fare to operas, but his recordings have revealed him to be a specialist in French orchestral music, notably in his coverage of works by Albert Roussel and Guillaume Connesson. This double hybrid SACD from Chandos offers Denève's interpretations of the orchestral works of Claude Debussy, and the lavishly detailed and expressive performances by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra show a conductor and an orchestra in complete sympathy with the music. Because the presentation by Chandos is first-rate from an audiophile perspective, with spectacular reproduction and close-up, credible presence, the listener is immersed in Debussy's dazzling colors from the opening of Images, and surrounded by fully dimensional sonorities throughout the album, which includes such other masterpieces of impressionist music as Jeux, Nocturnes, La Mer, Printemps, and Prélude à l'après-midi d'une faune. When the clarity of the notes, the richness of the timbres, and the depth of the orchestra's sound are appreciated altogether, it's truly a seductive experience, and Debussy's lush and atmospheric music achieves its potential in this impressive package. Indeed, it's difficult to pull away from these gorgeous performances, so prepare to listen to both SACDs in one long, leisurely sitting. It's that good.© TiVo
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Les soupers du roy

Arion Orchestre Baroque

Classical - Released September 8, 2023 | Les Disques ATMA Inc.

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