Diapason d'or

As the symbiosis between the art of the poet and that of the composer, the French mélodie became the jewel of the salons of the ‘Belle Époque’. By placing a string quartet and a piano around the singer, Chausson’s Chanson perpétuelle, Lekeu’s Nocturne and Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson oscillate between chamber musical intimacy and orchestral ambition. Alongside these famous pioneering pieces, this programme devised by the Palazzetto Bru Zane champions a return to the art of transcription, so popular in the nineteenth century, with the aim of expanding the repertory for voice, strings and piano in order to unearth some forgotten treasures. Hence Hahn, Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, La Tombelle, Ropartz, Louiguy and Messager all appear in a programme whose guiding thread is the emotions of nocturnal abandonment: the charms of twilight, the trajectory of dreams, the terror of nightmare or the exhilaration of festive occasions. Alexandre Dratwicki has made these arrangements in the style of the nineteenth century. Appropriately enough, the programme ends with La Vie en rose, for this music offers a kaleidoscope of all the colours of human feeling. The texture of solo strings and piano sets Véronique Gens’s incomparable storytelling artistry in a new ligh. © Alpha Classics

Giovanni Antonini, virtuoso flautist and orchestral conductor, is the founder of the Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, which burst on the baroque musical scene in 1985; together they have amassed an impressive discography. Partnered by Alpha Classics, they have launched a complete recording of the 107 symphonies by Joseph Haydn, in anticipation of the 300th anniversary of his birth in 2032. Il Giardino Armonico is celebrating a composer with whose music he made his name: Antonio Vivaldi. With Antonini as soloist in a programme of his own devising recorded between 2011 and 2017, a generous bouquet of concertos "per flauto" : RV 433 (‘La Tempesta di Mare’), plus the Concertos RV 441, 442, 443, 444, and 445, and an amazing version of Cum dederit, a solo from Nisi Dominus RV 608, for the chalumeau, the predecessor to the modern-day clarinet. © Alpha Classics

The programme for Pierre Gallon’s new record enjoys the high patronage of a gentleman who was famous in Parisian musical circles in the first half of the 17th century, a certain Charles Fleury Sieur de Blancrocher (or Blanrocher, Blancheroche, 1605-1652). Although he was much admired as a lutenist in his own time, he never took the instrument up professionally. We know relatively little about his life - merely that he became friends with the harpsichordist Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667)… and then that he died in rather comical circumstances, falling down his own stairs in the aforesaid Mr Froberger’s presence. Finally, he has left us a single piece, for the lute - L’Offrande (The Offering), which is to be found in two major sources from the period. When Blancrocher died no fewer than four composers each wrote a “tombeau” - a tribute piece - in memory of the lutenist. Froberger and Louis Couperin’s pieces were written for the harpsichord, whereas Dufaut and Denis Gaultier’s were for the lute. Although fairly different, all four are wonderful; indeed each of them is a major piece in its composer’s body of work, so the idea is to bring these four tombeaux together on record for the first time. They are the four cornerstones upon which the programme as a whole rests, and then laid out around them there will be various other pieces which are formally more conventional (preludes, dance suites, fantasias, etc.) composed by the same four composers in Paris in the 1650s. Although Couperin and Froberger both composed for the harpsichord, Gaultier and Dufaut were both lutenists, and so Pierre Gallon has transcribed their pieces on the record for the harpsichord, as people might have done at the time. Finally, the programme comes full circle by - quite literally - inviting Mr de Blancrocher to attend his own tribute, as the lutenist Diego Salamanca performs Blancrocher’s Allemande. © L'Encelade

Erkki-Sven Tüür, born in Estonia in 1959, writes music that is characterised by intense energetic transformation. The intuitive and rational approach is synthesised into a complete organic system. He is the composer of nine symphonies, ten concertos, numerous chamber works and an opera. Dedicated to his compatriot Paavo Järvi and composed to mark the centenary of the Estonian Republic in 2018, Tüür’s Ninth Symphony is entitled "Mythos". According to the composer, this refers to the myths that arise about nations and how they have acquired their independence, and also deals with the long history of the Finno-Ugric peoples. Paavo Järvi and his Estonian Festival Orchestra have made the world premiere recording of this work, along with The Incantation of Tempest (2004), dedicated to the Estonian composer Veljo Tormis, and Sow the Wind, composed in 2015, inspired by climatic ‘gusts of wind’ and ‘whirlwinds’. © Alpha Classics

Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656-1705) was one of the most brilliant members of the significant school of violinists that flourished in seventeenth-century Dresden. This impressive virtuoso, who was even applauded by Louis XIV at Versailles, wrote the very first compositions for unaccompanied violin, which of course foreshadow the later masterpieces of Johann Sebastian Bach. The programme recorded here includes some suites from his collection published in Dresden in 1696, as well as the suite that was printed in the Mercure galant of Paris in 1683, following his visit to Versailles.

Written in 2018 for his favorite pianist Kirill Gerstein, Thomas Adès’s Concerto for Piano has been a worldwide success. Commissioned by the Boston Symphony, where the piece premiered on March 7, 2019, and where it was recorded, it is already part of the program of fifty soon-to-be concerts in Europe and in the US, all to be performed by its exclusive dedicatee. A twenty-minute-long piece with a classical three-movement structure, the concerto mixes every genre and influence with kaleidoscopic and skillful talent. The new piece includes many influences, mainly hinting at Twentieth-century piano concertos, such as works by Ravel, Prokofiev, Bartók, Poulenc, and Rachmaninov, as well as Gershwin’s jazzy style, peppering the whole composition. This new piece takes the past into account and will be recognizable to traditionalist audiences of classical music concerts. The second part of the album, that Thomas Adès, one of the most well-known and performed contemporary composers, also dedicates to himself, includes his Totentanz (“Dance of Death”) for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and orchestra. The piece was composed in 2013 for the famous London Proms’ series to celebrate Britten and Lutosławski’s hundred-year anniversary, two essential composers of the twentieth century. Recorded during a concert that took place in Boston in 2016, Totentanz is inspired by a famous mural in Lübeck’s Saint Mary’s Church, bombed by the allied forces in 1942. Adès’ Totentanz is part of a rich tradition where the fragility of the human condition is explored in relation to contemporary tragedies. Written on anonymous texts from the 15th century, the Totentanz consists of drinking songs on the theme of death embodied by the baritone. Throughout the work, we witness the reactions of different individuals of humanity faced with death - preacher, pope, emperor, cardinal, king, monk, knight, doctor, usurer, businessman, sacristan, craftsman, farmer, daughter, child - who are embodied by the mezzo-soprano. When the Pope and Emperor appear jaded, the King is panicked while the peasant, fatalist, accepts his fate... © François Hudry / Qobuz

The unconventional character that is Benjamin Grosvenor delivers us a very personal version of these two essential works of the piano repertoire. The first Brit to have signed an exclusive contract with Decca Classics in sixty years, he first made his name in 2004 when he won the Keyboard section of BBC Young Musician of the Year, thus throwing the doors open to an international career. Produced alongside the talented young conductor from Hong Kong Elim Chan, the musical director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, this new album dedicated to Chopin revisits the young British prodigy’s first musical loves. It was following a very successful concert with Elim Chan that they decided to record the Piano concertos by Chopin together. In this fifth album (for Decca), it’s Grosvenor’s virtuosity and ability to make the instrument sing that allow him to fully express his favourite music. “Chopin was the first composer to whom I felt a strong connection to as a child. I have always been drawn to his music, and his piano concertos are among some of the finest in the repertoire”, he says. Other than his already legendary sound and the expert way he strikes a balance between the different acoustic levels, his vision underlines the dreamy romanticism that delicately envelops the two concertos by the then-20-year-old Polish composer. © François Hudry/Qobuz

20 years old and a brazen amount of talent: the Afro-British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has three idols. Cellists Jacqueline du Pré and Mstislav Rostropovitch and reggae legend Bob Marley, three passionate and extrovert forces. His career really took off after he performed at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in 2018. His album Inspiration released the same year broke all sorts of sales records in the United Kingdom and his hometown of Nottingham even named a bus after him. As part of a partnership with the label Decca, he is back with a new recording, this time dedicated to the famous Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra headed by their new conductor, Sir Simon Rattle. A first class encounter which produces a poetic vision, almost like chamber music, of this renowned concerto. Made famous by Jacqueline du Pré’s versions (with Barbirolli then with her husband Daniel Barenboim), Elgar’s Concerto is accompanied on the track listing by other shorter pieces which were popular among soloists and music lovers alike a century ago, which the younger generation is bringing back in vogue. The album thus features arrangements of traditional music and works by Bloch, Elgar, Bridge, Fauré and Klengel. From the infinitely large to the infinitely small with the staggering virtuosity of this bright young talent. © François Hudry/Qobuz