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

This is a Barbiere "di qualità, di qualità": in fact, of very great quality indeed, from Deutsche Grammophon. Recorded in London in the summer of 1971, it is one of the first meetings of Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra. It is also the first of Alberto Zedda's philological editions of Rossini's works, whose scores have been covered over by inherited errors for over a century. Getting rid of the additions which have, quite wrongly, become traditional, means restoring certain interruptions and the fine instrumentation of the period; and above all, singing and playing without exaggerations, thanks to an innate sense for the theatre. It's a spot of spring cleaning which has restored the youth of the 24-year-old composer's masterpiece. Bravo, signor barbiere, ma bravo! It is a dream record, with singers who are well-versed in the repertoire. Everyone is right where they need to be, from Teresa Berganza's wiley and cheeky Rosina, to the refined and hard-working Figaro played by Hermann Prey, via Luigi Alva's frivolous Count and the utterly ridiculous Basilio played by the outrageous Paolo Montarsolo. We're amused by their antics, as we admire the well-oiled and unstoppable machine of Rossini's theatre, under the unceasingly inventive and thrilling baton of Claudio Abbado. © François Hudry/Qobuz

The new delivery of the complete works for keyboard of Johann Sebastian Bach (Volume 8), brought to us by harmonia mundi, and featuring Benjamin Alard on the harpsichord, clavichord, and organ, is centred around the composer’s work while he was with his first wife, Maria Barbara. Featuring 3 CDs, or 85 tracks in this digital version, it brings together a series of compositions for educational purposes. On the one hand the Inventions and Sinfonias, on which all apprentice pianists and harpsichordists have tried their hand, and, on the other hand, the six French Suites probably composed to perfect the musical skills of their eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann.They are “French” only in virtue of the apocryphal title which was given to them after Bach’s death. We find no trace of this mentioned on the original manuscripts. Bach's music also escapes strict classification, even if the influence of Couperin can be quite clearly perceived in this vast corpus, demonstrated by Benjamin Alard’s clever introduction of some Preludes by the French composer as an epigraph to the French Suites of Bach. Above all, these pieces are reminiscent of his own genius, with various influences intended to create a world belonging to the Cantor.Faithful to his organological research, here Benjamin Alard uses a pedal clavichord like that built by the French organ maker, Emile Jobin. The colour of this discreet instrument is simply bewitching. A sort of fruitiness is exuded, the full depth and subtlety of which can be savoured, notably in the Pedal-Exercitium, BWV 598 and in the transcription for keyboard of the famous Chaconne - Second Partita, initially composed for the violin. We also like the golden tones of the Couchet harpsichord from 1645, "restored" (modified later) by Blanchet in around 1720. We find the entirety of Benjamin Alard’s skill in this new recording; his science which illuminates complicated polyphony, his clean energy, and his curiosity for fascinating worlds of sound. © François Hudry/Qobuz

No one can accuse soprano Sandrine Piau of ever resting on her laurels, and with this 2023 release, she began, in her late fifties, a new partnership with accompanist David Kadouch. It is a bit hard to tell what the theme is supposed to be all about. Only some of the songs are "intimes," and many are not about voyages; Piau also notes that some of the songs are about "the theme of people being snatched away from the land of the living," not an especially intimate concept. Best just to listen and take the songs one by one, and this will reveal not only strong performances but organizational principles the performers don't mention. The first part of the program is devoted to German lieder, the second to French mélodies (before a final return to Schubert), with one piano piece in each set. Piau is arguably the greatest French interpreter of German song, and her Schubert Erlkönig, D. 328, has nothing trite about it as she inhabits but doesn't make opera characters out of the three characters in the piece. Another "theme" is that Piau really makes songs by women her own. There is a group by Clara Schumann, with an excellent setting of Heine's Lorelei that owes something to Erlkönig but is in no way a knockoff, and a fine group by Lili Boulanger that fits Piau beautifully. Sample Si tout ceci n'est qu'un pauvre rêve. Perhaps the Mignon songs do not fit her quite so well at this late date, but the heftier numbers by Liszt and Wolf more than make up for this. Yet another theme is that these are all songs that give the pianist a great deal to do, and Piau's interactions with Kadouch are sensitive and detailed enough to make one eagerly anticipate future collaborations. Superbly recorded by Alpha at the Teldex Studio in Berlin, the album made classical best-seller charts in early 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo

While the German soprano follows in the footsteps of Cecilia Bartoli, her virtuoso voice separates her fans from the purists who prefer a less fanciful vocal-line. This long-awaited new album from Simone Kermes shows off her masterful voice in almost every register and there is no sign of the excessiveness for which she has previously been criticised. Typically referred to as a “Ba-rock” star, some people are irritated by her gestures and extreme theatrics during her concerts, but those mannerisms are long forgotten here in the absence of any images. The title of the album, “Mio caro Händel”, says a lot about the affinity Simone Kermes feels with the Saxon composer. She has selected his most popular pieces, such as Ombra mai fù(Largo of Love), Piangeró la sorte mia(I will lament my fate) and Lascia ch’io pianga(Let me weep), along with some much less well-known pieces, which are some of the most wonderful revelations and rare musical gems on the album. The singer recorded this testimony of love to Händel in Berlin’s famous Jesus-Christus-Kirche in 2018 accompanied by Amici Veneziani, an ensemble put together especially for her which mostly comprises of German musicians and is led by Russian violinist Boris Begelman. As a great traveller who went all over Europe, this captures Händel’s European spirit perfectly. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Leonard Bernstein's 1953 musical Wonderful Town, with song texts by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, hasn't had frequent performances and recordings. It has lots of things going for it: one of Bernstein's memorable tunes in "Ohio" ("Oh, why-o, why-o, why ..."), a conga scene that is inadequately motivated but certainly anticipates West Side Story, and an ensemble cast conception that was certainly known to the writers of A Chorus Line 20 years later. It also has some things going against it: the number "One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man" is retrograde even by the dismal standards of musical theater gender relations, and the storyline is a bit random. Bernstein seems to have acknowledged this with his concert version of the score, which showcases his tunes and his up-to-the-minute familiarity with jazz and Latin rhythms while not weighing itself down with the tale. Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra are fine, relaxed performers in this repertory, and they deliver a performance that goes beyond usual symphony-orchestra correctness. One wonders how the topical references to American football, Kiwanis clubs, and the like, go down with overseas performers, but Duncan Rock as Wreck seems comfortable with the latter (sample "Pass the Football") and the lead female vocal duo of Australia's Danielle de Niese and the American Alysha Umphress are fine in the more universal theme of small town girls in the big city. The cast's American accents are impressively consistent, probably more so than they would be in a U.S. production, and the sound from this 2017 live recording at the Barbican keeps everything clear. © James Manheim /TiVo

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

A young ensemble of instrumentalists and singers revives the precious historical practice of singers accompanying themselves (already brought back into currency by the soloist Vivabiancaluna Biffi), thus producing a wholly new sound in music usually assigned to unaccompanied voices. With Concerto di Margherita, self-accompanied singing becomes "collective" for the first time in our era, and is amplified in a shared gesture in which all the members of the group – playing and singing together with extraordinary coordination – produce a sonority unprecedented in this repertory. Created at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland, the group (which is named after the Duchess of Ferrara, Margherita Gonzaga) performs as a consort of five voices, theorbo, harp, viola da gamba, guitar and lutes, inspired by the "Concerto delle dame" of Ferrara. The recording debut of Concerto di Margherita presents arrangements of a wide range of instrumental and vocal works (madrigals, villanellas and canzonas), drawing on music by De Wert, Gastoldi, Monteverdi and the "blind man’s buff" scene from Giovanni Battista Guarini’s Il pastor fido (1580). © Arcana

This triple album wraps up the Shostakovich by conductor Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The series has had much to recommend it, and Nelsons, by his own admission as a Latvian, has as strong a grasp of Shostakovich's ambivalent attitude toward the Soviet state as anyone. Left for last here are possibly the four least-performed Shostakovich symphonies: two early rather avant-garde pieces, the Symphony No. 12 in D minor, Op 112 ("The Year 1917"), and the Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor, Op. 113 ("Babi Yar"). All of these works are programmatic, and most of them have voices. The Symphony No. 13 is a vocal-choral-orchestral work (baritone Matthias Goerne and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and New England Conservatory Symphonic Choir join Nelsons and the Symphony). The best is saved for last; Goerne approaches this tragic work, marking the massacre of Ukrainian Jews in 1941, with deep soberness, and Nelsons maintains the elevated tone. The rest is not quite top-level. The Symphony No. 12 is as close as Shostakovich ever came to a pro-Soviet potboiler, and Nelsons seems unexcited by it. The early Symphony No. 2 in B major, Op. 14 ("To October"), and Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 20 ("The First of May"), have a nice edge, and Nelsons keeps things under control in the massive 13-part fugue at the end of the first part of the Symphony No. 2. This is brash, youthful Shostakovich at its best and the album as a whole will satisfy followers of Nelsons' series and, in the "Babi Yar" symphony, anyone else.© James Manheim /TiVo

Recordings by Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman are a rare event, and eagerly awaited by his many fans. They surely won’t be disappointed with this new opus that brings together Szymanowski, Zimerman and legendary pianist Arthur Rubinstein.Returning to his roots, Krystian Zimerman pays tribute to his compatriot Karol Szymanowski on the 140th anniversary of the composer’s birth. This selection of little-known works testifies to the importance of Szymanowski within the piano repertoire. A long twenty-eight years separate Zimerman's recording of Masques, Op. 34 (made in 1994 in Copenhagen) from the rest of the programme, which was recorded in 2022 in the exceptional acoustics of the Fukuyama Concert Hall near Hiroshima.Nevertheless, the considerable lapse of time between these recordings doesn’t detract from the album's coherence. This is thanks to Zimerman's fluid, clear and readable sound, which—as we know—leaves nothing to chance. This fascinating recording reveals various facets of Szymanowski's compositional genius and features both his mature and early works, all of which were influenced by the great Chopin.Composed during the First World War whilst staying at the family estate in Ukraine, the three parts of Masques evoke Debussy, Scriabin and Stravinsky. However, each movement is overlaid with the orientalist perspective so typical of the Polish composer. A few carefully chosen Préludes and Mazurkas stand alongside the splendid Variations on a Polish Folk Theme for piano, Op. 10, composed by a young Szymanowski still in the process of mastering his mother tongue. © François Hudry/Qobuz