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

The musical world owes a debt of gratitude to French conductor Christophe Rousset not only for the vital, exquisite performances he delivers with the ensembles Les Talens Lyriques and Choeur de Chambre de Namur, but for his work in bringing to light neglected masterpieces of Baroque opera. Lully's Bellérophon, premiered in 1679, was a huge success in its time, with an initial run of nine months. Part of its popularity was doubtless due to the parallels that could be drawn between its plot and certain recent exploits of Louis XV, but even the earliest critics recognized the score's uniqueness and exceptional quality within Lully's oeuvre, so it's perhaps surprising that it has never been recorded before. The distinctiveness of the music was likely a result at least in part of the fact that Lully's preferred librettist Philippe Quinault was out of favor at the court of Louis XV at the time, so the composer turned to Thomas Corneille for the libretto, and Corneille's literary and dramatic styles were so different from Quinault's that Lully was nudged out of his comfort zone and had to develop new solutions to questions of structure and the marrying of music to text. It is the first opera for which Lully composed fully accompanied recitatives, and that alone gives it a textural richness that surpasses his earlier works. The composer also allows soloists to sing together, something that was still a rarity in Baroque opera. There are several duets and larger ensembles; the love duet, "Que tout parle à l'envie de notre amour extreme!," is a ravishing expression of passion and happiness, as rhapsodic as anything in 19th century Italian opera. The level of musical inventiveness throughout is exceptional even for Lully; the expressiveness of the recitatives, the charm of the instrumental interludes, the originality of the choruses, and the limpid loveliness of the airs make this an opera that demands attention. Rousset and his forces give an outstanding performance that's exuberantly spirited, musically polished, rhythmically springy, and charged with dramatic urgency. The soloists are consistently of the highest order. Cyril Auvity brings a large, virile, passionate tenor to the title role and Céline Scheen is warmly lyrical as his lover Philonoë. Ingrid Perruche is fiercely powerful as the villain, Stéenobée, and Jean Teitgen is a secure, authoritative Apollo. Soloists, chorus, and orchestra are fluent in the subtle inflections of French middle Baroque ornamentation. The sound of the live recording is very fine, with a clean, immediate, realistic ambience. This is a release that fans of Baroque opera will not want to miss. Highly recommended. © TiVo

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

"Four oeuvres, four pianos" might be a better way of looking at the cover of this album by Alexander Melnikov: Schubert is played on a (simply stunning) Viennese Graf fortepiano from around 1835, Chopin on an Érard grand piano from 1837, Liszt on a Bösendorfer from 1875 and Stravinsky on a modern-day Steinway - the only work which is not played on an instrument contemporary to its composition, as Petrushka dates from 1911, and most certainly not from 2014 like the Steinway in question! The differences between the four instruments are not immediately obvious, but Melnikov's project is to demonstrate just how closely art and instrument follow one another: the Wanderer Fantasy benefits from the clarity of the Graf fortepiano which, while it lacks powerful volume, offers a startling palette of different sounds for the artist to explore. Chopin's twelve Études Op. 10 on the Érard – still within a few years of the Graf – increased the power of the sound in particular, but at the cost of reducing the range of colours in the palette. With the Réminiscences de Don Juan by Liszt, the Bösendorfer unleashes real pianistic thunderbolts, which almost overshadows the content! Finally, Petrushka on the Steinway takes us back into a rather more familiar territory. This is a concept of pairing from Melnikov, whose fondness for historical instruments is well-known. © SM/Qobuz

Five years after her solo debut recording, Direct Message, which programmed 20th and 21st century works for trumpet and piano, trumpet player Matilda Lloyd departs the traditional repertoire (aside from the two Arban arrangements from the Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet). Instead of following more well-worn routes, Lloyd elects to present a program of Romantic period opera arias, mostly in arrangements for trumpet and chamber orchestra (undertaken here by the Britten Sinfonia under Rumon Gamba) by William Foster, who worked closely with Lloyd on this project. Lloyd's skill as a musician is evident throughout, though the two Arban tracks most clearly allow her abilities to shine. The arrangements throughout are good, though how much they add to the performances rather than transcriptions and transpositions is up for debate. Lloyd notes with excitement the decision to include two pieces by Pauline Viardot, and one of the highlights here is the treatment of Viardot's Havanaise. This is certainly a trumpet release aimed at a wider audience than trumpet and brass circles, and it has already found success on the retail market. Chandos delivers just the right atmosphere from the Church of St. Augustine, Kilburn, in London. The future is bright for this trumpeter, and one looks forward to where her path may take her. © Keith Finke /TiVo

Without a doubt, it is urgent to get back to essentials, to retrace the path from the canyons to the stars, to celebrate "the beauties of the earth (it's rocks, it's birdsongs), the beauties of the material sky, the beauties of the spiritual sky" as Messiaen writes at the head of his score. According to Jean-François Heisser, "there is a grandeur in this work that sweeps aside reservations about the composer; something in the music escapes us and instantly grips the audience". One cannot deny this work exemplifies the "too big for me" of which Gilles Deleuze spoke. © Mirare

Backed by the Sun King despite a lukewarm audience reception at first, Lully's Atys (1676) went on to become one of the composer's most successful operas, with revivals at French court theaters as late as 1753. In modern times, however, it is a considerably rarer item due to the massive forces and time required. Christophe Rousset was in the pit as harpsichordist when conductor William Christie gave the first modern revival of the work in the late '80s. That experience marks this 2024 release, which made classical best-seller lists at the beginning of that year. That is not common for a hefty five-act Baroque opera, but even a bit of sampling will confirm why it happened: Rousset, from the keyboard, brings tremendous energy to the opera. He pushes the tempo in the numerous dances and entrance numbers, and the musicians of Les Talens Lyriques and the singers of the Choeur du Chambre de Namur, all of whom have worked closely with Rousset in the past, keep right up. The singers in the solo roles are all fine; haut-contre Reinoud Van Mechelen in the title role and Ambroisine Bré as the goddess Cybèle, who sets the tragic plot in motion, are standouts. The sound from the increasingly engineering-expert Château de Versailles label is exceptionally clear in complex textures, and the sensuous cover art (representing, it is true, not the Roman mythological figure of Atys but Hippomène and Atalante) is a bonus. In the end, this is Rousset's Atys, and that is a very good thing.© James Manheim /TiVo

Christophe Rousset and his Les Talens Lyriques continue their exploration of the operas of Jean-Baptiste Lully for the Aparte label with 1675's Thésée ("Theseus"), the composer's third "tragédie en musique" with librettist by Philippe Quinault. Commissioned by King Louis XIV, the libretto recounts some early-life exploits of the titular character from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It was immensely popular for more than a century before finding itself in less demand than later, more compact versions of Quinault's text, which were set by composers such as Handel (Teseo, 1712). What is there for a king and his court not to like when the Prologue declares the king a god and sings the praises of king and kingdom? Rousset has his Les Talens Lyriques in fine form, and the ensemble plays crisply and concisely throughout. Rousset, conducting from the harpsichord, keeps the action moving in this colossal and dramatic work. The soloists, especially mezzo-soprano Karine Deshayes as Médée ("Medea") and tenor Mathias Vidal as the titular Thésée, display clear expertise in the realm of early French opera. This work is a major vehicle for mezzos in the role of the jealous sorceress Médée, and Deshayes is splendid. The Prologue has some awkward, almost hesitant singing from the chorus, but as the work progresses, the Chœur de chambre de Namur becomes stronger and, in the end, proves to be an asset to the whole (consider their turn as the inhabitants of the underworld with Deshayes on "Sortez, ombres, sortez de la nuit éternelle" from Act Two). This is a worthy addition of a lesser-known opera to the growing Lully collection from Les Talens Lyriques.© Keith Finke /TiVo

When this album was recorded, in March 2022, no-one could have imagined that it would be Bramwell Tovey’s last recording. Chandos Records would like to dedicate this recording to the memory of Bramwell Tovey, with whom the company had collaborated for over a decade; a versatile musician highly accomplished as both a composer and a conductor, immensely personable and humorous, who possessed an innate understanding of the qualities of his fellow orchestral musicians and quickly earned their respect and devotion. He shall be very sorely missed. Tovey and the BBC Concert Orchestra capture the wit and charm of Poulenc’s music perfectly. Each piece sizzles with excitement, and the well-known pieces (the Sinfonietta and ballet Les Animaux modèles) are beautifully complemented by less frequently heard miniatures: La Baigneuse de Trouville and Discours du général from Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel and Pastourelle from L’Éventail de Jeanne. © Chandos