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Le concert de sa vie
Michel Sardou
French Music - Released April 30, 2021 | Universal Music Division Mercury Records
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Un été d'enfer
Luc Vegas
Pop - Released July 26, 2019 | LV Production
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Reflet
Sandrine Piau
Classical - Released January 12, 2024 | Alpha Classics
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Diapason d'or
In a world of "singles," pursued even by classical music labels nowadays, here is a whole album that makes up a single, sublime musical utterance. Reflet is a follow-up, similarly concerned with light effects, to soprano Sandrine Piau's German-language Clair-Obscur of a few years back. The German songs might have been a bigger stretch for Piau than the French material here, but Reflet has possibly an even more sublime coherence. One feels that every note is almost foreordained as the program opens with classic orchestral songs from Berlioz, Henri Duparc, and the less common Charles Koechlin, proceeding into darker, more mysterious realms with Ravel's Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé, and ending with the youthful ebullience of Britten's Quatre chansons françaises. An illustration of how carefully calibrated everything is here comes with two Debussy pieces, Clair de lune and "Pour remercier la pluie" (from the Six Épigraphes Antiques), arranged for orchestra from other media. These serve as entr'actes between the sections of Piau's program, and they should by all rights have been annoying: aren't there enough genuine orchestral pieces that could have filled the bill? But just listen. These fit into the patterns that run through the whole album, and they make perfect sense, just like everything else. Piau's voice is delicate, soaring, and richly beautiful; one of the miracles of the current scene is its durability and versatility. Her support from conductor Jean-François Verdier, leading the Victor Hugo Orchestra, is confidently smooth, never intruding on the spell Piau weaves. A magnificent orchestral song recital that made classical best-seller lists in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo
Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Bande originale du film)
Yann Tiersen
Film Soundtracks - Released April 23, 2001 | UGC Images - ADA France
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Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulen (known to Western audiences simply as "Amelie") was a magic realist romantic comedy by French auteur Jean Pierre-Jeunet which introduced French composer Yann Tiersen to listeners worldwide. Tiersen's whimsical, deceptively simple instrumental music was equally influenced by composers like Chopin and Satie, as well as contemporaries such as Michael Nyman and Philip Glass, and emerged as an enjoyable blend of European classical music and French folk. Playing a variety of instruments from piano and violin to accordion and xylophone, Tiersen composed a number of delicate, charming pieces which suited the somewhat magical mood of the film very well and deservedly made him a star in his own right.© Sergey Mesenov /TiVo
Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulen (known to Western audiences simply as "Amelie") was a magic realist romantic comedy by French auteur Jean Pierre-Jeunet which introduced French composer Yann Tiersen to listeners worldwide. Tiersen's whimsical, deceptively simple instrumental music was equally influenced by composers like Chopin and Satie, as well as contemporaries such as Michael Nyman and Philip Glass, and emerged as an enjoyable blend of European classical music and French folk. Playing a variety of instruments from piano and violin to accordion and xylophone, Tiersen composed a number of delicate, charming pieces which suited the somewhat magical mood of the film very well and deservedly made him a star in his own right.© Sergey Mesenov /TiVo
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French Duets - Fauré: Dolly Suite; Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc etc.
Steven Osborne
Classical - Released March 5, 2021 | Hyperion
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L'Ecole du micro d'argent
Iam
Hip-Hop/Rap - Released January 1, 1997 | Parlophone (France)
Distinctions
The Qobuz Ideal Discography
This album is one of the cornerstones of French hip-hop music. Its release was a major act for IAM as they finally found a sound to match the quality of their lyrics, as well as for French hip-hop, confirming the fact that rap has a lot of followers in the Hexagon. Like their peers from the suburbs of Paris, NTM, IAM went to New York to instigate the production of this album, seeking for the essence of the sound one can only find in the Big Apple (their previous album was also cut in N.Y.). They teamed with Prince Charles Alexander, the mixer and engineer who worked a lot for Bad Boy Records. They even got close to the Wu-Tang realm through Sunz of Man members on "La Saga." The sound has definitely changed from the previous albums: at first putting themselves in the Egyptian tradition (look at their names), they now have found the musical depth they deserve as ones of the few best lyricists of France. Definitely influenced by the Wu-Tang soundscapes, the opening track is the story of the battle between their school, from the silver mic, against the wooden mic school, in a Bushido style. Too bad that non-French speaking listeners won't get the lyrics; they cannot appreciate the quintessence of IAM's style. However, most of the album sticks to the traditional approach of storytelling, as it covers the city life in its darkness: little brothers that want to grow too fast and be the new caïd ("Petit Frère"), money hungry women who have sex without giving their names, the difficulties to have a similar chance and destiny than a boy growing up in the well-off (about equality of chances) and much more. Not many subjects of relief here, we only breathe thanks to the banging instrumentals and phrasing of the MCs. IAM takes the time to raise questions we don't want to hear, and stories we don't want to remember. This album is just hip-hop as its best: quality of the production with skilled lyricists in top form. This would just be one of you first "must-have" purchase if you plan to approach French rap music.© Vincent Latz /TiVo
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Berlioz: Les nuits d'été, Op. 7, H 81b - Ravel: Shéhérazade, M. 41 - Saint-Saëns: Mélodies persanes, Op. 26
Marie-Nicole Lemieux
Classical - Released September 29, 2023 | Warner Classics
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This is a nicely programmed album consisting of French song cycles spaced several decades apart from the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of them, the Mélodies Persanes ("Persian Songs") of Saint-Saëns, is not a common item; with its bouncy text-setting, nobody would compare it to the deep Eastern influences woven into various Ravel works, but then, Ravel was inspired to execute those by listening to Saint-Saëns. In Berlioz's Les nuits d'été and Ravel's Shéhérazade, contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux has plenty of competition, but there is less for the Saint-Saëns. Another attraction is the work of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo under conductor Kazumi Yamada, neither a household name. The group is velvety smooth in the Berlioz cycle, with quiet and perfectly controlled string sound throughout. The strings match the voice of Lemieux beautifully; both have a luxuriance that fits the extravagantly Romantic texts of the Berlioz. So, everything is in place here, and listeners' reactions to the whole are likely to come down to their feelings about Lemieux's voice itself. It has a rapid, confident vibrato that is remarkably pitch-accurate as it moves up and down within her range. To these ears, it is beautiful. It also doesn't vary much according to the text; the Saint-Saëns songs and Ravel's Asie, which are intended to evoke exotic melodic traits, sound much like the Berlioz. A bit of sampling will likely determine one's enjoyment of the album in general, and there are certainly many things to like here.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Berlioz: Les Nuits d'été, Op. 7 - Harold en Italie, Op. 16
Michael Spyres
Classical - Released November 18, 2022 | Warner Classics
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This release is part of a Berlioz series by conductor John Nelson and the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg, but it is the soloists who shine here. Tenor Michael Spyres, who is really hitting his stride, has a voice pleasantly suited to French music, rounded and subtle, but there is more; Berlioz suggested that several singers perform the orchestral song cycle Les nuits d'été, Op. 7, but Spyres takes all the songs himself. Moreover, he does them in the original keys, which is rarer still. This calls for a singer with exceptional control of dynamic extremes in different parts of his range, and Spyres is exceptionally flexible in this regard. There is a confidence and nonchalance to this performance that grows on the listener as the performance proceeds, even as the sound engineering puts Spyres too far front and center to the detriment of the orchestra's contributions. This isn't so pronounced in the anti-concerto Harold en Italie, Op. 16, and here again, there is a standout soloist; Timothy Ridout offers a rich sound and a real narrative quality that seems to evoke the score's source in Lord Byron's long poem. This exceptionally satisfying Berlioz album hit best-seller charts in late 2022.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Enfers
Raphaël Pichon
Opera Extracts - Released February 23, 2018 | harmonia mundi
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4F de Télérama -
Gramophone Editor's Choice -
Diamant d'Opéra -
Choc de Classica -
5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
With his ensemble Pygmalion, Raphaël Pichon has written the listing for this album in the form of a "pastiche" of a Mass for the Dead, a Requiem both sacred and profane. While it is a long way from having all the defining traits, it does possess all the outlines: Introit, Kyrie, Gradual, Sequence, Offertory, In Paradisum... The idea came about after a recent discovery, in the Bibliothèque Nationale of an anonymous requiem mass from the 18th century, in which the writer constructed a "parody" based on musical extracts from Castor and Pollux and the Fêtes de Paphos by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Note that the term "parody" doesn't necessarily imply satire or mockery: it refers to the practice of taking up older music and setting new words to it. This fusion of sacred music (the mass) and profane music (lyrical tragedy), a common practice during the Enlightenment, was a procedure that Pichon wanted to take up. In French society at the time, when Catholicism was the norm, where the political system was monarchical rule by divine right, the representation of ancient pagan Hell on theatrical stages seemed to betray a fascination in the beliefs of the ancients. And so this programme melds together pagan fable with a Christian imaginary, where Hell takes on different faces. It is the place of unjust and eternal torment, a place of privation where a couple is separated, one half kept in Hades. But, in the lyrical tragedy, Hell is also a place of perdition: obscure forces unleashed in Sabbath rites, a Satanic vision which unearths the darkest depths of the human soul... Stéphane Degout is the author of this tragedy, bringing together such varied characters as Phaedra, Pluto, and the Parcae. The composers whose music is put to use are Rameau and Gluck, with a single borrowing from Rebel: it would have been a shame not to mention his singular Chaos (taken from Éléments), which starts with a dissonant chord containing the seven notes of the scale of D minor. © SM/Qobuz
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Flammes
Niagara
Pop - Released January 1, 2002 | Universal Music Division Label Panthéon
Released nine years after their split, Flammes is a greatest-hits package from the electronic pop duo described as France's answer to the Eurythmics, Niagara. The 2002 18-track collection features material from their four studio albums, including 1985 debut single "Tchiki Boum," European hits "Pendant Que Les Champs Brulent" and "J'ai Vu," and their swan song, "Le Minotaure."© Jon O'Brien /TiVo
Quelques titres que je connais d'elle, Vol. 1
Françoise Hardy
French Music - Released December 8, 2023 | Parlophone (France)
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d'Indy: Jour d'été à la montagne, La Forêt enchantée & Souvenirs
Rumon Gamba
Symphonies - Released April 1, 2008 | Chandos
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One often reads that Vincent d'Indy was an influential teacher who left a mark in the careers of composers as diverse as Albert Roussel, Erik Satie, Isaac Albéniz, Joseph Canteloube, Darius Milhaud, and Arthur Honegger, to name just a few. Yet his own music has not thrived as well as his students' works, and recordings have been rather spotty for a composer of his reputation. To remedy this, Chandos has initiated a series of d'Indy's orchestral works, and this first volume features three scarce offerings -- Jour d'été à la montagne, Op. 61; La Forêt enchantée, Op. 8; and Souvenirs, Op. 62 -- in sympathetic performances by Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. D'Indy's style was in part an outgrowth of Wagnerism, as channeled through César Franck, so the music in these tone poems has a rich, Romantic feeling that clearly derives from those sources. It's possible, too, to hear a little of Debussy's influence in Jour d'été à la montagne and Souvenirs, and the fairy tale appeal of La Forêt enchantée seems traceable to Weber and Berlioz, so there's a lot more to d'Indy's stylistic range than is usually supposed. But to hear in them only these influences is to miss much of d'Indy's originality, especially his impressionistic orchestration and his atmospheric use of melody and unusual harmonies. The Iceland Symphony Orchestra delivers these scores with radiant warmth and shimmering colors, and Gamba inspires the ensemble to play with delicacy and tenderness, emphasizing the magical qualities of these picturesque works. The sound of these recordings is a bit hazy and soft-edged, and the performances have a dreamy ambience due to resonant acoustics and the comparative lack of sharp attacks.© TiVo
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Cinéma
Esther Abrami
Classical - Released September 22, 2023 | Sony Classical - Sony Music
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This release by violinist Esther Abrami seems to fit a common enough pattern, with a photogenic young artist playing melodic, moderate-tempo stuff tailor-made for Britain's Classic FM and its cousins in other countries. It fills its role well, but there are some notable new wrinkles here. The album's "Cinéma" theme is common enough, but not all of the music here consists of movie themes. The most novel thing is the presence of anime music by Toshio Masuda, Go Shiina, and Shigeru Umebayashi. These are not familiar names outside the anime world, but to aficionados of the genre, their music is appreciated, and they will be known by name among the harder core. Abrami integrates them well into the rest of the program; the idiom is slightly different, with more concentrated sentiment, so to speak, but she links pieces tonally and, interestingly, drops in pieces with no connection to cinema to make the whole thing fit together. A guitar-and-violin arrangement of Astor Piazzolla's Libertango marks something of a high point, breaking the sequence of slow numbers. As for the movie themes, they are naturally enough centered in French films but also include figures known beyond France; James Newton Howard's "The Hanging Tree" from The Hunger Games is included. Abrami has a nice cantabile, and she has set herself the task of creating nothing less than a violin crossover album for a new age. She has largely succeeded.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Turning Point / Trio D'ete
Gonzalo Rubalcaba
Jazz - Released August 23, 2022 | 5 Passion Records
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Debussy: Piano Duets
Louis Lortie
Classical - Released September 9, 2022 | Chandos
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Regular duet and two-piano partners, Hélène Mercier and Louis Lortie have returned to the studio for this all-Debussy programme. The present album features duets written by the composer himself – such as the Petite suite, the Six épigraphes antiques, and the Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire, as well as a number of arrangements of his solo piano pieces (Première Arabesque, La Fille aux cheveux de lin, Ballade slave). The album ends with André Caplet’s monumental arrangement of Debussy’s best-known orchestral work, La Mer. Stripping the work of its orchestral colours, this two-piano version allows the listener to appreciate more easily Debussy’s ground-breaking harmonic innovation. The album was recorded in the concert hall at Snape Maltings, in Suffolk, using a pair of Bösendorfer 280 VC grand pianos. © Chandos
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VIXI Tour XVII
Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine
French Music - Released April 1, 2016 | Columbia
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J'arrive
Jacques Brel
French Music - Released January 1, 2013 | Universal Music Division Barclay
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A jumbled up reissue of the 1968 original J'Arrive, which arrived at a time when Jacques Brel had pretty much receded into the background, having retired in 1967 as a full-time chansonier. But that's not to say that he wasn't writing spectacular songs -- he was. After the smashing successes of the earlier "Ne Me Quitte Pas," "Les Bourgeois," and "Chanson de Jacky," however, these later, less orchestrated compositions have become lost within the canon. With a set split between the two quintessential Brel styles -- peppy chanson and introspective ballad -- there's a little something here for everyone. "Regarde Bien Petit" is stunning, sweeping and delightfully punctuated with Midsummer Night's Dream touches, as is "En Enfant," leaving the upbeat "Vesoul" and "Comment Tuer L'Amant de Sa Femme Quand On Ete Eleve Comme Moi Dans la Tradition" to balance nicely. Fans of Marc Almond's brilliant renditions of Brel's best, meanwhile, will recognize and delight in "J'Arrive" and "L'Eclusier." While bonus tracks have been tacked on to nearly all Brel reissues thus far, the real gems in this incarnation are two cuts from Brel's film work. The first, "L'Enfance," comes from the 1973 film Le Far-West. A French/Belgian production, the film follows Brel in the guise of a cowboy on a journey through modern America's West as he tries and succeeds in building a utopian Old West town. The second bonus track comes from the cast LP of 1968's L'Homme de la Mancha, with Brel's powerful re-tooling of Don Quixote, staged at Paris' Theatre des Champs-Elysees. "La Quete," known to English-speakers as "The Impossible Dream," is by far one of Brel's finest and most stirringly passionate performances ever. Sung solo, the emotion that Brel imparts through this performance would be hard pressed to be duplicated by any one, in any language.
© Amy Hanson /TiVo
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Bijoux perdus
Jodie Devos
Classical - Released September 16, 2022 | Alpha Classics
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Booklet
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Choc de Classica
After her triumph with the album "Offenbach Colorature", Jodie Devos has chosen to follow in the footsteps of one of her compatriots, the Belgian coloratura soprano Marie Cabel (1827 -1885), who at the age of twenty-six scored a phenomenal success in Adolphe Adam’s opéra-comique Le Bijou perdu, which she premiered in Paris. She then took on a more dramatic role in Halévy’s Jaguarita l’Indienne, whose great Invocation with chorus ("À moi ma cohorte!") again hit the bullseye in a run of 124 performances over just a few months. Cabel enjoyed one hit after another, in Auber’s Manon Lescaut and La Part du diable, Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du Nord and Le Pardon de Ploërmel, Victor Massé’s Galathée, and Le Songe d’une nuit d’été by Ambroise Thomas, who in 1866 gave her the biggest role of her career: Philine in Mignon, based on Goethe. In partnership with the musicologists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, who have resurrected and edited all these unjustly forgotten rarities, and Pierre Bleuse conducting the Brussels Philharmonic and the Flemish Radio Choir, Jodie Devos pays tribute to this star of the nineteenth century, whose audacity and sense of mischief she undoubtedly shares! © Alpha Classics
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Berlioz: Herminie, Les Nuits d'été / Ravel: Schéhérazade
Véronique Gens
Vocal Music (Secular and Sacred) - Released May 3, 2012 | Ondine
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Booklet
Distinctions
4F de Télérama -
4 étoiles Classica -
La Clef du mois RESMUSICA
The vocal works of Hector Berlioz are less familiar than his gigantic orchestral pieces, but in the right hands they're delightful. This release by French soprano Véronique Gens, who is at the absolute peak of her powers, has all you could ask. It has the sheer creamy goodness of Gens' voice, made still tastier by her obvious enthusiasm for the likes of Ravel's Asie (Asia) from the Shéhérazade set. It offers a distinction from earlier traversals of the same material: the song cycle Les Nuits d'été (Summer Nights), especially, has been the province of big dramatic sopranos, but Gens' reading is more chamber-sized, and indeed more in line with the medium-sized halls Berlioz would have known in material of this kind. The album has a novel item: the early Berlioz cantata Herminie, written in 1828 as one of his unsuccessful attempts to capture the Prix de Rome. (He finally succeeded with Sardanapale in 1830.) The music of this piece has links to the Symphonie fantastique, and in general it has the fearlessly showy lyricism that makes the music of the young Berlioz so attractive. The album boasts excellent orchestral support from the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire under conductor John Axelrod, who fully merits his full-page picture in the CD version's booklet. Sound ideally suited to the dimensions of Gens' voice is just a bonus by this time. This is state-of-the-art Berlioz (and Ravel).
© TiVo
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Voyage
Lavinia Meijer
Chamber Music - Released March 20, 2015 | Sony Classical
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It's been a while since someone has issued harp recitals that have consistently captured the public imagination, but harpist Lavinia Meijer has shown strong programming instincts in albums that have done just that. Voyage (the title referent is pretty general) is an excellent example. After recording several albums for Channel Classics, Meijer was signed to Sony and released an album of works by Ludovico Einaudi to popular acclaim but mixed critical reception. Here she has threaded classical and crossover styles together very nicely, mixing standard-fare harp arrangements of the likes of Clair de lune and Satie with selections from the Amélie soundtrack of French composer Yann Tiersen. From Satie to Tiersen, Meijer says, is a "short step." Maybe, but many listeners will experience the Tiersen pieces as moments of relaxation, of clarification of the denser textures and significations of the French repertory pieces. There is no doubt that Tiersen is an evocative melodist, and Meijer brings out the film's slightly nostalgic flavor of romantic comedy. Recording the harp is engineering's black belt, and those worried that Sony would not be able to match the legendary sonics of Channel Classics can set their minds at ease: Meijer's harp has a startling presence, and the balances in the pieces with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta are excellent. The booklet, featuring artwork by Jeroen Krabbé, is another plus. Strongly recommended.© TiVo
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