Here is a refreshing recording, offering a selection of a dozen of Offenbach’s overtures, carefully omitting some of his most famous pieces to give the listener a pleasant feeling of discovery with regard to an otherwise well-known and recorded composer. Who could pretend to know Les Bavards, Les Bergers, Monsieur et Madame Denis or Le Roi Carotte. Titles that invariably highlight the prolixity of the bourgeois entertainer that was Jacques Offenbach.Composed once the artist had finished the overall work, all these pieces can be assimilated to “potpourri overtures”. They borrow and combine the themes later developed by the singers, which serve as a refrain for the listener. Very few composers escaped the rule, with the notable exceptions of Mozart whose overtures are most often pieces in their own right, and Beethoven who, after composing three overtures for his only opera piece, wrote the one for Fidelio, which didn’t prefigure any of the themes to come.After the social satire characterised by a series of works incorporating the current context and jeering at politics and morals, Offenbach had to shift his focus following the fall of the Second French Empire, and opted to write fantasies and comic operas, up until his latest masterpieces. This album offers a panorama of Offenbach’s many styles, juxtaposing plagiarism, parody, the spirit of dance, and an innate sense of melody. © François Hudry/Qobuz

All tracks are in 24/88.2 excepted the track 4 from disc 2 "Infiniting Repeating (2013 demo)" which is in 24/44.1.Two years after Daft Punk's split in February 2021, comes a reissue of their decade-old final album Random Access Memories in a deluxe version with a nine-track disc bringing together studio outtakes, demos and unreleased tracks. Included are "Horizon" (a ballad released only in the Japanese version at the time), two minutes of vocoder testing by Pharrell Williams for "Lose Yourself to Dance," and two unreleased tracks: "Prime (2012 Unfinished)," which didn't make it to original release, and the soulful "Infinity Repeating (2013 Demo)" featuring Julian Casablancas and The Voidz. (Casablancas would end up on RAM with "Instant Crush.") There's also the delightful "The Writing of Fragments of Time," an eight-minute behind-the-scenes track which puts us in the studio with Daft Punk and producer Todd Edwards as they discuss this "beach road" song, and create it all at once. Thirty-five minutes of bonus material ends with "Touch (2021 Epilogue)," the track composed with their idol Paul Williams, and chosen as the soundtrack for the band's farewell video in 2021. This is a deluxe version that is well worth chasing after. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

An absolute delight, the first full-length album from singer-songwriter supergroup boygenius truly plays to its members' individual and collective strengths. (Credits extend to Autolux's Carla Azar on drums and Jay Som's Melina Duterte on bass.) Each is allowed to shine equally, taking lead on their own songs—but also bring out surprising, shining qualities in the others. "True Blue" sounds like a track from one of Lucy Dacus' solo records, filled out with pure harmonies and grand, low-key drama. Dacus is brilliant at pinpointing fine, evocative details—bandmate Phoebe Bridgers says of her, "Lucy's a noticer"—and there's no shortage in this tale of real, messy friendship that thrills and bruises: "When you moved to Chicago/ You were spinning out … When you called me from the train/ Water freezing in your eyes/ You were happy and I wasn't surprised." Julien Baker's vibrant "$20," likewise, delivers her trademark nervous edge, but the trio take it to unexpected places: First, Bridgers and Dacus thread a gossamer string of ethereal sweetness through Baker's earthiness; later, the three sing over each other in a glorious round robin of conversation until Bridgers, desperate to get her message across, shreds her throat raw yelling out "Can you give me $20?!" They trade lines on "Not Strong Enough," playing around with Cure guitars (acknowledged in Baker's verse: "Drag racing through the canyon/ Singing 'Boys Don't Cry'") and interpolating Sheryl Crow ("Not strong enough to be your man/ I tried, I can't"). That one builds to an excellent '80s anthemic bridge, with the three chanting "Always an angel, never a god." "Cool About It" summons a Simon & Garfunkel-style folk melody and layers on 2023 cleverness with thoughts like, "I took your medication to know what it's like/ Now I have to act like I can't read your mind." "Satanist" delights in off-kilter and herky-jerky chords à la early Weezer, before sliding sideways into a woozy dreamscape. Even a tossed-off lark like "Without You Without Them"—with sweet, a capella Andrews Sisters harmonies—charms. Bridgers' "Emily I'm Sorry" is particularly moody and moving, while stoic "We're in Love" is a stark portrait of Dacus and a guitar for nearly eight tear-jerking minutes before the others float in for support. Perhaps the most revealing is "Leonard Cohen," so intimate you can hear fingers sliding on strings. It's a true story about the trio's friendship and a time Bridgers was so excited to play an Iron and Wine song for her bandmates that she lost track of her surroundings. "On the on-ramp you said/ 'If you love me you will listen to this song'/ And I could tell you were serious/ So I didn't tell you you were driving the wrong way on the interstate/ Until the song was done," Dacus sings, before showing off their grateful love for each other: "Never thought you'd happen to me." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz 

Antonio Vivaldi's Le Quattro Stagioni is one of the most beloved works in Baroque music, and even the most casual listener can recognize certain passages of Spring or Winter from frequent use in television commercials and films. Yet if these concertos have grown a little too familiar to experienced classical fans, Max Richter has disassembled them and fashioned a new composition from the deconstructed pieces. Using post-minimalist procedures to extract fertile fragments and reshape the materials into new music, Richter has created an album that speaks to a generation familiar with remixes, sampling, and sound collages, though his method transcends the manipulation of prerecorded music. Richter has actually rescored the Four Seasons and given the movements of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter thorough makeovers that vary substantially from the originals. The new material is suggestive of a dream state, where drifting phrases and recombined textures blur into walls of sound, only to re-emerge with stark clarity and poignant immediacy. Violinist Daniel Hope is the brilliant soloist in these freshly elaborated pieces, and the Konzerthaus Kammerorchester Berlin is conducted with control and assurance by André de Ridder, so Richter's carefully calculated effects are handled with precision and subtlety. Deutsche Grammophon's stellar reproduction captures the music with great depth, breadth, and spaciousness, so everything Richter and de Ridder intended to be heard comes across.© Blair Sanderson /TiVo

Violinist Isabelle Faust and fortepianist Alexander Melnikov have been accumulating a catalog of distinctive historical performances of Schumann. Here, they turn to the composer's most famous chamber works, the Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47, and Piano Quintet in E flat major, Op. 44, bringing on board violist Antoine Tamestit, cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, and violinist Anne Katharina Schreiber in the Piano Quintet. Despite the common key and the fact that the two works were written just a few weeks apart, they're quite different, and one strength of these performances is that the players catch the difference. The Piano Quartet is quiet and inward, with Faust's "Sleeping Beauty" Stradivarius purring in the opening Sostenuto assai passage. The slow movement of this work gets a performance of rare lyricism here. The Piano Quintet looks forward to a more public, orchestral kind of chamber music, and the players succeed in transforming the entire sound environment of the music, aided immeasurably by Harmonia's engineers. The music was recorded at the small hall of the German federal youth music academy in Trossingen, and this is a superb space for the music. Of interest far beyond historical performance circles, these are wonderful performances of Schumann's major chamber works.© James Manheim /TiVo

Max Richter's 2012 Recomposed album was an enormous success, topping charts in many countries (not just the usual classical-oriented ones) and making its way onto numerous soundtracks, including that for the television series Bridgerton. For those rare souls who haven't encountered it, it was a sort of contemporary remake of Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concertos, using the originals as thematic source material to a greater or lesser degree and subjecting them to electronic treatment. It has become almost as ubiquitous as the concertos on which it was based. Now, Richter has remade Recomposed, even recomposing it a bit; the new album is just under four minutes shorter than its predecessor. He also recruits London's ethnically diverse Chineke! Orchestra, gives them gut-stringed period instruments on which to play (the players were using these for the first time, and this works quite a bit better than you might expect), and collaborates with a new violinist, the wirier Elena Urioste in place of Daniel Hope, and also uses "period" electronics, playing a vintage Moog synthesizer himself. Deutsche Grammophon's notes reassure classical listeners that they may not recognize the difference between the Moog and the earlier contemporary electronics, and perhaps this is a problem as well for the many young electronic music fans who have come to Richter, but for anyone around in the 1970s, Richter's bass lines and sonic washes will be quite recognizable. Is Richter simply trying to milk his original concept? Maybe, but in a sense, this was and remains the point. Richter has written that he wanted to use period instruments on the original Recomposed recording but couldn't interest recording companies in the idea. They add a fresh wrinkle to the sound, and the whole new project is an intriguing attempt to see what remains of Vivaldi in an era when music evolves through remixes and through sampling of earlier material rather than being fixed and discrete. There is even a "Levitation Mix" of the "Spring 1" movement, as if to say that the process will continue beyond its latest iteration. It's safe to say that this release has something to offer even to those who know the original Recomposed album well, or for that matter, who know the original Four Seasons well.© James Manheim /TiVo

Robert Schumann was never more purely Romantic than in his set of piano pieces Kreisleriana, Op. 16. The set is of extramusical, literary inspiration, taking its name from a character in stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann, and it features the explosive imagination of the young Schumann at its best. Schumann announced the work, which he apparently wrote in four days, rather breathlessly to his inamorata, Clara, and more than almost any other work of his, it seems to spill over the boundaries of the short piano piece. Hélène Grimaud has recorded the work before, but she seems to have added intensity this time around. She is nervously excited in the faster virtuosic numbers, but sample No. 4 to hear her marvelous control over the tonal instability that appears in many of these pieces. The Brahms Intermezzi, Op. 117, were also "For Clara," sent to Clara Schumann toward the end of his life; the two had remained friends, and here, in Grimaud's evocation of tempestuous old-school pianism, one is stirred to wonder what Clara sounded like playing this music. The connection of the nine Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 32, of Brahms to Clara is less clear, and the set, with baritone Konstantin Krimmel on the vocals, may seem like an afterthought; the three performances on the album were all made at different places and times. However, taken on its own terms, it is a fine performance of this set, consisting entirely of settings of texts by Eastern poets. Krimmel catches the rather mystical nature of the songs, and Grimaud, with whom he has worked in the past, is effective as an accompanist. This is an important entry in Grimaud's catalog, with a Kreisleriana that is as fine as any.© James Manheim /TiVo

Music and friendship are utterly intertwined for Hania Rani and Dobrawa Czocher, the Polish duo who have just recorded their first album of original music, "Inner Symphonies". Friends since their teenage years at music school in Gdansk, the pair share a spirit of adventure and curiosity. Even as life took them on different paths - Hania as a pianist and composer with two solo albums and a collection of songs written for Cinema, Theatre and Art Performances to her name; Dobrawa as solo cellist with the Szczecin Philharmonic - their friendship endured. In 2015, they collaborated on an album Biala Flaga, featuring their arrangements of Polish rock star Grzegorz Ciechowski's msuic, giving them a taste of recording success and leading to the yet more ambitious "Inner Symphonies". © Deutsche Grammophon

In 2017, Sampha lit up the world with his debut solo album Process, which delved into the grief of losing his parents and unveiled an incredibly sensitive side to his music. Since then, the London-based artist has embarked on numerous collaborations with heavyweights like Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Solange, Kanye West, and FKA Twigs. The impact of this period on Sampha’s work is clear – perhaps none more so than in his second album Lahai, inspired by the birth of his daughter in 2020.Crafted with delicacy and a quiet strength, Lahai certainly stands out as a musical highlight of 2023. The album presents a succession of exquisitely mastered ideas, whether it's the oddly energetic "Suspended," a tale of Sampha’s state of bliss, "What If You Hypnotise Me?" featuring a haunting piano performance by Léa Sen, or the single "Only," which clearly bears the influence of modern soul. Sampha continues to explore intimacy supported by impeccably crafted production, and undoubtedly, he delivers his best project to date. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

After the double album of the Violin and Harpsichord Sonatas with Kristian Bezuidenhout, here is the next instalment in a Bach recording adventure that began nine years ago with a set of the Sonatas and Partitas. Isabelle Faust, Bernhard Forck and his partners at the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin have explored a multitude of other works by Bach: harpsichord concertos, trio sonatas for organ, instrumental movements from sacred cantatas etc. All are revealed here as direct or indirect relatives of the three monumental Concertos BWV 1041-43. This fascinating achievement is a timely reminder that the master of The Well-Tempered Clavier was also a virtuoso violinist! © harmonia mundi