NEW RELEASES - First Semester 2017 - Outhere Music

NEW RELEASES 2017 // 1 WWW.OUTHERE-MUSIC.COM

OUTHERE MUSIC HAS BECOME A KEY PLAYER ON THE INTERNATIONAL CLASSICAL SCENE OVER THE PAST TEN YEARS. NOW THE GROUP’S FLAGSHIP LABEL ALPHA MOVES TO A NEW LEVEL BY OPENING ITS CATALOGUE TO AN EVEN WIDER RANGE OF REPERTOIRES AND WELCOMING NEW ARTISTS OF INTERNATIONAL STATURE. RICERCAR, PHI, ARCANA, AEON, RAMÉE AND FUGA LIBERA, THE OTHER LABELS OF THE GROUP CONTINUE TO OFFER OUTSTANDING MUSICAL EXPERIENCE.

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Alpha Classics

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Ricercar 20 Fuga Libera

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Arcana 31 Phi 38 Aeon 42 Outnote 45 Instinct Collection

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ALPHA CLASSICS

From the Renaissance to the music of the twenty-first century, with new or established talents, Alpha is committed to ambitious projects of the highest artistic standard that often stray far from the beaten track.

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Based in Paris, Alpha Classics is the principal label of the Franco-Belgian group Outhere Music. Building on a history going back more than fifteen years and a reputation earned in the field of early music, Alpha took on a new lease of life in 2015 by opening its catalogue to every repertory, welcoming top-flight international artists from very varied backgrounds (including Anna Prohaska, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Barbara Hannigan) and discovering new talents, whose career development is a priority for the label.

Alpha has just been named Label of the Year 2016 by the magazine Classica.In 2016, Alpha received two Echo Awards in Germany (for the pianist Anna Vinnitskaya and the Belcea Quartet), a Gramophone Award for the album Néère by Véronique Gens and two Diapason d’Or of the Year (Belcea Quartet, Beethoven sonatas

by Lorenzo Gatto and Julien Libeer).

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As part of its digital development programme, Alpha recently launched the application Alpha Play, which offers a simple way of discovering classical music through its own catalogues and the catalogues of partner labels.

NEUKOMM REQUIEM À LA MÉMOIRE DE LOUIS XVI

LA GRANDE ÉCURIE ET LA CHAMBRE DU ROY JEAN-CLAUDE MALGOIRE

ALPHA 966 JANUARY 2017

In spite of the immense success he enjoyed in his lifetime, Sigismund Neukomm (born in Salzburg in 1778, died in Paris in 1858 at the age of eighty) is practically forgotten nowadays. Yet he left a catalogue of nearly two thousand works, including fifty masses and a number of oratorios and motets.

Neukomm spent twenty years in the service of Prince Talleyrand, who commissioned him to write a Requiem Mass in memory of Louis XVI, guillotined in Paris on 21 January 1793. This was the second mass of the fifty he was eventually to compose, several of which were dedicated to monarchs. The Requiem was given at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna on 21 January 1815 by more than three hundred singers divided into two choirs. Neukomm conducted one of them, while the other was directed by his friend Salieri.

As part of their joint series of recordings, the Château de Versailles and Alpha continue their rediscovery of repertory that has marked the history of France and of music. Here JeanClaude Malgoire conducts this unpublished Requiem. This is the first appearance in the Alpha catalogue of this pioneering figure from the golden age of the exploration of Baroque performing practice.

With CLÉMENCE TILQUIN SOPRANO, YASMINA FAVRE MEZZO-SOPRANO, ROBERT GETCHELL TENOR, ALAIN BUET BARITONE

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BERLIOZ SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE

LA CHAMBRE PHILHARMONIQUE EMMANUEL KRIVINE

ALPHA 714 JANUARY 2017

Created on the initiative of Emmanuel Krivine, La Chambre Philharmonique likes to see itself as the achievement of a utopia.

An orchestra of a new kind, comprising members of the finest European ensembles motivated by the same musical urgency, La Chambre Philharmonique places pleasure at the heart of a new adventure in music. It is also a space for research and exchange, identifying the instruments and period techniques appropriate to each repertory.

In May 2014, La Chambre Philharmonique performed the Symphonie Fantastique of Berlioz in a memorable concert at the Cité de la Musique in Paris. It is this occasion that is now presented on DVD. The symphony is complemented by four fascinating bonus features: Emmanuel Krivine discusses with some of the musicians their work in common and the practice of period-instrument performance, three of the orchestra’s principals (violinist, bassoonist and timpanist) demonstrate the specific characteristics of their instruments, and the DVD offers the option of watching the entire symphony with commentary

by Krivine.

At the moment when he is about to become Music Director of the Orchestre National de France, here is the rewarding testimony of an illustrious musician, highly respected by all those who work with him, who talks about music with simplicity, humour and sincerity.

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METAMORFOSI TRECENTO LA FONTE MUSICA MICHELE PASOTTI

Myth, Sallust tells us, is the relation of ‘things that never happened, but always are’. Ever since the fourteenth century, music has drunk deep from the source of myths. When composers were not dealing with sacred history, with the great morality tales of Christ, they turned to myth as to a great art and a matchless repertory of exemplary stories.

ALPHA 286 JANUARY 2017

Metamorfosi Trecento is a musical exploration of myths and of the polyphony of the late Middle Ages. The ancient myths, foremost among them Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and their medieval transpositions are extremely present in the repertory of the Ars Nova: Narcissus lost on a fatal voyage, the stories of Daphne’s dream, Philomela, the myth of Orpheus, Callisto . . .

The lutenist Michele Pasotti and the singers and instrumentalists (fiddle, recorder, clavicymbalum, Gothic harp etc.) of the ensemble he founded in 2005, La Fonte Musica, bring these wondrous tales back to life with a beauty and artistry we wished to share with you.

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POLYCHROME PROKOFIEV | STRAUSS | RAVEL

TOBIAS FELDMANN BORIS KUSNEZOW

Polychromy. A simple concept that defines the very essence of this recording, in which colour is omnipresent and takes on diverse and nuanced forms. The choice of works forms at once a harmony and a contrast of shades and sonorities: this album offers the virtuosic and lyrical Violin Sonata no.2 in D major op.94bis of Sergei Prokofiev, the Sonate posthume of Maurice Ravel, and the Violin Sonata in E flat major op.18 of Richard Strauss, the pièce de résistance of the programme.

ALPHA 253 JANUARY 2017

Tobias Feldmann, a prizewinner at the 2015 Queen Elisabeth International Competition, invites us on this musical journey with his vividly coloured and expressive violinistic language, supported with finesse by his partner Boris Kusnezow. Skilfully combining virtuosity and elegance, they create an alchemy whose extreme precision enables these works to yield up all their poetry and refinement.

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Alpha Classics is proud to support the career development of these young yet already seasoned artists.

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AZAHAR GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT | IGOR STRAVINSKY MAURICE OHANA | CANTIGAS DE SANTA MARIA

LA TEMPÊTE SIMON-PIERRE BESTION

ALPHA 261 FEBRUARY 2017

After The Tempest (Alpha 208), its first recording on a Shakespearian theme, which was much admired (Diapason d’Or etc.), La Tempête presents ‘Azahar’ (orange blossom in Spanish), which contrasts and interweaves the polyphony of Machaut with the poetry of the Spanish cantigas and the century of Stravinsky and Ohana. Simon-Pierre Bestion, founder of the company La Tempête, tells us: ‘I like the idea of disorientating the listener between different historical periods. Stravinsky wrote his Mass after discovering Machaut’s setting, while Ohana’s Cantigas de Santa Maria allude to those of Alfonso the Wise and to folksong . . . One can take extraordinary liberties with Machaut’s famous Mass: its music calls for a fairly sonorous, straight style of singing – like Corsican or Basque polyphony. I chose singers familiar with early music, powerful, direct voices, using little vibrato, voices that could also sing Stravinsky and Ohana. The orchestra was arranged in consorts for the early repertory, and in mixed desks for Ohana and Stravinsky. The chorus was placed all around in a circle, in a single row. I like to share that experience of feeling the sound physically.’

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LETTRES INTIMES BÉLA BARTÓK, QUARTET NO.1 ˇ LEOŠ JANÁCEK, QUARTET NO.2 ERWIN SCHULHOFF, FIVE PIECES

QUATUOR VOCE

ALPHA 268 FEBRUARY 2017

The Quatuor Voce, which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, follows up its two recordings of Mozart with Juliette Hurel (Alpha 204) and Brahms with Lise Berthaud (Alpha 214) by inviting us on a journey to central Europe. The three works recorded here were written over a period of twenty years. Two of them allude to their composer’s love lives. Bartók’s First Quartet might be seen as Beethoven’s Quartet no.17. The intense opening Lento is a lyric-dramatic movement that transposes an unhappy experience of love. No previous quartet had come so close to the Beethovenian ideal. Janáček’s Second Quartet reflects his love for Kamila Stösslová, and is a faithful mirror of emotions in all their spontaneous and constantly shifting authenticity. Schulhoff was one of the first Jewish composers to fall victim to Nazi barbarity. Inventive, omnivorously curious, he was a virtuoso pianist who performed both jazz and serial music.

His Five Pieces consist of a suite of dances in different styles, successively Alla Valse viennese, Alla Serenata, Alla Czeca, Alla Tango milonga and Alla Tarantella. (from a text by Bernard Fournier)

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SAINT-SAËNS MÉLODIES AVEC ORCHESTRE

YANN BEURON TASSIS CHRISTOYANNIS ORCHESTRA DELLA SVIZZERA ITALIANA MARKUS POSCHNER

ALPHA 273 FEBRUARY 2017

Although the turn of the twentieth century marked the golden age of French song, the genre was generally accompanied on the piano and only rarely orchestrated by its composers. But Camille Saint-Saëns, a great lover of poetry, was also a champion of the orchestrated mélodie and the French coloristic style. He also wanted to counterbalance the overwhelming popularity of operatic arias in concert programmes. An immense admirer of Victor Hugo, Saint-Saëns set many of his poems to music, including L’Enlèvement, Rêverie, and Le Pas d’armes du Roi Jean, regarded as one of his masterpieces. Exoticism and a certain sense of the supernatural run through such songs as Danse macabre, one of the most popular pieces of classical music, but always heard nowadays either in its version for orchestra alone or performed by a singer with piano accompaniment. Of the twenty-five mélodies with orchestra listed in the catalogue of Saint-Saëns, nineteen are recorded here, all of them for the first time!

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With interpreters of the calibre of Yann Beuron and Tassis Christoyannis, the words are perfectly served here and the composer’s coloristic talents heard from the very first bars. This disc is a genuine event that enables us to rediscover a whole segment of the history of vocal music, a renaissance made possible by the Fondation Bru Zane.

World premiere recording

MOZART LA CLEMENZA DI TITO

LE CERCLE DE L’HARMONIE JÉRÉMIE RHORER

ALPHA 270 FEBRUARY 2017

The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Alpha continue their series of recordings of the Mozart operas conducted by Jérémie Rhorer.

After Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which received excellent international reviews (including FFFF in Télérama), here now is La clemenza di Tito.

Gilles Macassar wrote in Télérama late in 2014 of ‘divinatory conducting, a cast close to the ideal . . . The last opera Mozart composed, long undervalued, closes the chapter of the Baroque and looks into the future, blazing a new trail that heralds the nineteenth century.’

That outstanding interpretation is now available in this two-CD set, featuring a high-powered cast – Kurt Streit (Tito), Karina Gauvin (Vitellia), Julie Fuchs (Servilia), Julie Boulianne (Annio), Robert Gleadow (Publio) and, in the role of Sextus, a singer who enjoyed triumphal acclaim from the audience at each performance: Kate Lindsey.

The American mezzo-soprano has now joined Alpha, and her first album, devoted to Kurt Weill (see Alpha 272), will be released in May 2017.

2 CDs

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HAYDN2032 NO.4 IL DISTRATTO

IL GIARDINO ARMONICO GIOVANNI ANTONINI

ALPHA 674 FEBRUARY 2017

The fourth volume of the Haydn2032 project thrusts into the limelight one of the most important stock characters in the theatre of sounds and words, the Kapellmeister, and explores some glamorous and (in)glorious moments in the career of Maestro Haydn. It features three symphonies by the ‘Shakespeare of Music’ – one of which is even associated with an actual play.

This bears the title ‘Sinfonia in C. per la commedia intitolata Il distratto’ (the name of the play soon became the symphony’s nickname) and consists of an overture, four entr’actes, and a finale to be played at the end of the performance. Also on this disc is a large-scale buffo scene by his colleague Cimarosa. Il maestro di cappella is a witty and ironic parody, in which a member of the ‘old school’ of musicians tries to improve the ensemble playing of his orchestra. To his chagrin, the players do react, but in extremely undisciplined fashion: they are distracted, make false entries and disagree musically... (from a text by Christian Moritz-Bauer)

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ALSO AVAILABLE ON VINYL!

HAYDN2032 NO.4 IL DISTRATTO

IL GIARDINO ARMONICO GIOVANNI ANTONINI 2 LPS + CD + DOWNLOAD CODE LIMITED EDITION NUMBERED FROM 1 TO 1000

ALPHA 675 FEBRUARY 2017

The fourth volume in the Haydn2032 project is released in a collector’s edition at the same time as the CD: an double LP album on high-quality vinyl (180 grams) containing the complete musical programme plus a forty-page booklet with a series of photos by Richard Kalvar of the Magnum Photos agency (born in New York in 1944), the full sleeve notes, the sung text of Il maestro di cappella and a previously unpublished text entitled The Prince and the Pyramids by the Swiss writer Alain Claude Sulzer, who won the French Prix Medicis étranger in 2008 for his novel A Perfect Waiter.

VINYL

The LP package also includes the CD and a code for downloading the digital file of the music.

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ˇ DVORÁK SYMPHONY NO.9 ‘FROM THE NEW WORLD’ A HERO’S SONG OP.111

NDR ELBPHILHARMONIE ORCHESTRA ´ KRZYSZTOF URBANSKI

ALPHA 269 FEBRUARY 2017

Following on from his critically acclaimed Lutosławski programme, the conductor Krzysztof Urbański pursues his collaboration with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and Alpha. The New World Symphony is a work that has always fascinated Krzysztof Urbański: ‘It was only when I studied Dvořák’s other symphonies that I came to understand the principal characteristic and strength of the Ninth: simplicity. I wanted to dig deeper, and so I examined the manuscript and parts used for the New York premiere. There I discovered things that changed my view of it, like the fact that the first four bars of the third movement shouldn’t be played on the repeat. That gives them a completely different meaning when they recur at the da capo... The coupling, the rare Hero’s Song, shows an entirely different side of Dvořák. The way he transforms the initial four-note motif to evoke so many varied feelings, from joy to tragedy, shows his immense compositional mastery.’

This new album will be released to coincide with the opening of the Elbphilharmonie hall in Hamburg, where Urbański will be one of the leading figures. (from an interview with Julius Heile)

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LISZT FAUST SYMPHONY

ORCHESTER WIENER AKADEMIE MARTIN HASELBÖCK

ALPHA 475 FEBRUARY 2017

The Faust Symphony undoubtedly constitutes one of the principal works of Liszt’s Weimar period, if not indeed his orchestral masterpiece. Liszt had become acquainted with Goethe’s poem Faust in 1830, in the French translation of Gérard de Nerval. He began composing the work in the 1840s, after a visit to the Goethe House in Weimar. Its first performance was arranged for September 1857, to mark the centenary of Grand Duke Carl August and the erection of a statue to Goethe and Schiller. On this occasion Liszt rounded the work off by adding a tenor solo and chorus at the end. The premiere took place on 5 September. This musical transposition of the poem is performed here by Orchester Wiener Akademie under Martin Haselböck, and follows their recording of Liszt’s transcriptions of works

by Schubert, released in 2015 (Alpha 471). In parallel with this, the Viennese period-instrument orchestra is also continuing its Resound Beethoven project, the recording of the complete symphonies at the venues of their first performances.

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LULLY

PERSÉE 1770

LE CONCERT SPIRITUEL HERVÉ NIQUET

ALPHA 967 MARCH 2017

Nearly a century after its composition, Lully’s Persée was recreated in 1770 to mark an exceptional event: the inauguration of the Royal Opera House at Versailles Palace, built to celebrate the wedding of the Dauphin (the future Louis XVI) and Marie Antoinette. For this unique occasion, three composers (Antoine Dauvergne, François Rebel and Bernard de Bury) were commissioned to revise Lully’s work and adapt it to the new circumstances and the new venue, which was regarded as absolutely extraordinary in its time.

Lovers of Lully’s opera will therefore meet their mythological hero again, now with a richer orchestration and more for the chorus and the ballet dancers to do. There were only two performances in 1770, but they were absolutely sumptuous: 95 choristers, 15 soloists, 80 dancers, 100 extras, 80 instrumentalists, five sets and 530 costumes.

You can now relive that historic event thanks to a recording conducted by the leading specialist in this repertory, Hervé Niquet, and a CD-book richly illustrated with engravings of the period and photos of the Opéra Royal and of manuscripts of the score.

CD-BOOK 2 CDs

Recorded at Versailles Palace in 2016, in collaboration with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.

ALEXANDER SCRIABIN

SONATAS NOS. 3 & 10, WALTZ OP.38

MAURICE RAVEL

MIROIRS

ANDREW TYSON

© Christian Steiner

After his first recording, devoted to Chopin (ZZT 347), and the award of First Prize at the Géza Anda Competition in 2015, which gave a substantial boost to his career, the young American pianist Andrew Tyson has devised a new programme to showcase his talents: two sonatas and a waltz by Scriabin coupled with Ravel’s Miroirs.

Andrew Tyson has chosen to associate two composers whose language seems to divide them, but who nevertheless have many things in common, notably their use of tonality, of certain unusual harmonies and of dissonance. Alexander Scriabin and Maurice Ravel also lived in the same city, at the same period, without ever meeting: Debussy, Ravel and the French musical elite of the period regarded their Russian colleagues as crude and uneducated. Yet when one listens to their music, even if their approach to the piano and to composition could hardly be more different, it is apparent that they use tone colours in the same way.

For Andrew Tyson, ‘Ravel is an elegant perfectionist, whose every detail is calculated and glitters like crystal; Scriabin is like a flickering flame – passionate, reckless, spontaneous and erotic.’

ALPHA 277 MARCH 2017

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NEW YORK VARÈSE | FULMER | FELDMAN | CAGE | REICH SHEPHERD | CARTER

ENSEMBLE INTERCONTEMPORAIN MATTHIAS PINTSCHER

ALPHA 274 MARCH 2017

Here is the third release in the collaboration between the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Alpha. This time the musicians of the ensemble and their conductor Matthias Pintscher focus on American music: Intégrales by Edgar Varèse (1924), Music for Wind Instruments by John Cage (1938), Instruments I for six instruments by Morton Feldman (1974), Elliott Carter’s Concerto for clarinet and ensemble (1996), Steve Reich’s WTC 9/11 for string quartet (2009-10), Sean Shepherd’s Blur (2011), and David Fulmer’s Within his bending sickle’s compass come for solo horn and ensemble (2014-15). More than ninety years of creativity and musical profusion at the heart of the global city that the Ensemble Intercontemporain celebrates today.

2 CDs

This double album is released to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the EIC: forty years of discoveries and of promotion of contemporary music at the highest level of performance.

GIVE ME YOUR HAND GEMINIANI & THE CELTIC EARTH

BRUNO COCSET LES BASSES RÉUNIES

ALPHA 276 MARCH 2017

Some of the Italian musicians who came to London to ‘make their fortunes’ found themselves influenced by the Celtic lands and their rich tradition of folk music. They were in their turn admired and sometimes even copied by their counterparts in the British Isles. This recording shows the outcome of that encounter.

Lorenzo Bocchi was probably the first Italian cellist to settle in Edinburgh, in 1720. Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762) arrived in Dublin in 1733. Since 1714 he had been resident in London, where he performed with Handel, but his passion for art dealing landed him in prison. The Earl of Essex then took him under his protection in Dublin, where he swiftly acquired a high reputation.

In 1749 he published in London a collection of songs and tunes arranged as sonatas for several instruments combined with a treatise that gives us much useful information on how to play this music.

James Oswald (1710-1769), whom Geminiani greatly admired, was a prolific Scottish composer. Turlough O’Carolan (16701738), a harper who went blind at the age of eighteen, travelled throughout Ireland as an itinerant bard in the service of aristocratic families. This disc brings these four musical protagonists together in an imaginary meeting (or perhaps it actually took place!) in Dublin.

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RESOUND BEETHOVEN VOL.5 BEETHOVEN, SYMPHONY NO.9

ORCHESTER WIENER AKADEMIE MARTIN HASELBÖCK

The Orchester Wiener Akademie and its conductor Martin Haselböck continue their RESOUND Beethoven series. The aim of this project is to record the complete Beethoven symphonies on period instruments in the venues where they were first performed, scrupulously respecting the layout of the orchestra 200 years ago, and also that of the chorus, which at that time was positioned in front of the orchestra. Volume 5 is devoted to the monumental Ninth Symphony with its famous ‘Ode to Joy’.

ALPHA 476 MARCH 2017

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The work’s premiere took place in May 1824 at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, which no longer exists. The symphony was performed again shortly afterwards in the Grosser Redoutensaal of the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. It is in this hall that the present recording was made in 2015.

TELEMANN 12 FANTASIAS FOR SOLO FLUTE

FRANÇOIS LAZAREVITCH

ALPHA 267 MARCH 2017

‘The reserve collections of the Bibliothèque Royale of Brussels hold the sole printed copy of Telemann’s Twelve Fantaisies for solo flute. . . . These fantasias considerably enrich the slender corpus of Baroque works for flute without bass, alongside two other gems, the Partita of J. S. Bach and the Sonata in A minor of C. P. E. Bach. A cycle for solo flute of this kind, arranged by tonalities (the twelve that come most naturally to the instrument) and rising gradually from the key of A to that of G, is unique in the repertory. . . . These fantasias, each with its own mood, are miniatures consisting of a succession of three or four movements in the same key. All of them have in common the concision, the formal brevity and the rapid alternation of their movements.

Telemann plays on effects of contrast and surprise by switching between opposing characters and tempi.

‘The open form of the fantasia offers the composer an ideal field of freedom and expression for his inexhaustible imagination.

A fervent champion of the réunion des goûts (mixed style) embracing German, Italian, French and Polish tastes, Telemann covered all the genres, national styles and compositional idioms of his time.’

François Lazarevitch

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RACHMANINOV PIANO CONCERTO NO.2 PAGANINI RHAPSODY

ANNA VINNITSKAYA NDR ELBPHILHARMONIE ORCHESTRA ´ KRZYSZTOF URBANSKI

ALPHA 275 APRIL 2017

Alpha continues its collaboration with the pianist Anna Vinnitskaya: after a Brahms disc (Alpha 231), she returns to her first loves with a programme of Russian music.

Accompanied by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and Krzysztof Urbański, with whom she works regularly, she has recorded Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, two of the great Russian composer’s major works.

The famous Second Concerto was composed after a troubled period: when Rachmaninoff began work on it, he was in the doldrums from every point of view and undergoing a creative crisis. It was only thanks to the intervention of a doctor-hypnotist that his composer’s block disappeared and the work was as successful as Dr Dahl had predicted. The concerto’s premiere was a triumph and a grateful Rachmaninoff dedicated it to his saviour.

He composed the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini during his last years, again after successive compositional crises. However, their difficult genesis has not prevented these two works from taking their place among the most popular in the repertory.

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PASSAGIO ‘EINE BAROCKE ALPENÜBERQUERUNG’ SONATAS BY MEALLI | MARINI | MUFFAT CASTALDI | BARTOLOTTI

GEORG KALLWEIT BJÖRN COLELL

ALPHA 540 APRIL 2017

For several years now, the guitarist and lutenist Björn Colell and the Baroque violinist Georg Kallweit, Konzertmeister of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, have formed a noted duo called Ombra e Luce: ‘With only two musicians and two instruments, we aspire to a perfect rapport and a permanent dialogue.

We have access to a rich repertory of original pieces from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries for violin and lute/theorbo: this was a widespread combination, essentially before 1700. We work a great deal on tone colours and nuances, spontaneity and improvisatory playing – a flexible and sensual interpretation of the works we perform, giving full value to chiaroscuro: ombra e luce! We are convinced that, played in this way, our “early music” can speak directly to the hearts even of listeners who are hearing it for the first time. This new recording, “Passagio”, is the result of our recent musical journeys. Setting out from Italy to go farther north, we have virtually and musically crossed the Alps with our instruments. The works on this recording shed a different light on the music of the courts of Modena, Bologna and Venice.’

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SON OF ENGLAND PURCELL | CLARKE

LE POÈME HARMONIQUE VINCENT DUMESTRE

ALPHA 285 APRIL 2017

Henry Purcell died on 21 November 1695 at the age of thirty-six.

The music he had written for the funeral of Queen Mary only eight months earlier was performed again for his burial service.

Soon afterwards, several composers paid tribute to Purcell by writing odes in his memory.

Jeremiah Clarke’s homage to ‘Orpheus Britannicus’ in his Ode on the Death of Henry Purcell is a deeply moving token of the younger composer’s admiration. Alas, Clarke too was destined to die in his prime, and we can only imagine what the destiny of British music might have been if their lives had been prolonged.

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After an acclaimed production of Dido and Aeneas, Vincent Dumestre and Le Poème Harmonique continue their exploration of the world of Purcell and seventeenth-century English music.

Constantly keeping an ear out for multiple musical ramifications, from Dowland to Lully by way of the Elizabethan masques, this new programme spotlights the genius of Jeremiah Clarke, whose sadly premature death makes us regret all the marvels he might have produced. Here is a collection of masterpieces coupling two of Purcell’s most popular works with an exceptional discovery.

ˇ DVORÁK | GRIEG | BRAHMS MUSIC FOR PIANO FOUR HANDS

JOS VAN IMMERSEEL CLAIRE CHEVALLIER

Jos van Immerseel and Claire Chevallier have enjoyed a close collaboration for many years now. Like Jos van Immerseel, Claire Chevallier loves period pianos; like him, she is a researcher and possesses her own collection of keyboard instruments.

ALPHA 282 MAY 2017

After its recordings of works by Saint-Saëns for two pianos and works by Rachmaninoff for four hands, the duo devotes a programme to the dance with the famous Hungarian Dances of Johannes Brahms and the no less celebrated Slavonic Dances of Antonín Dvořák. The much more rarely played Norwegian Dances of Edvard Grieg and the five Spanish Dances of Moritz Moszkowski complete this trip around Europe.

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A recording made on an authentic Carl Bechstein piano built in Berlin in 1870, from the personal collection of Jos van Immerseel.

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THOUSANDS OF MILES WEILL | ALMA MAHLER | ZEMLINSKY | KORNGOLD

KATE LINDSEY BAPTISTE TROTIGNON

ALPHA 272 MAY 2017

Closing the distance between classical music and Broadway, between the old world and the new, this album is born out of a stunning encounter between two performers. Kate Lindsey is an opera star whose career is skyrocketing. She has stunned audiences with her performances of Mozart and Purcell, but grew up steeped in the music of Broadway, from Gershwin to Cole Porter. Baptiste Trotignon is a multi award-winning jazz pianist who plays with big names like Brad Mehldau or Tom Harrell, but who has a long-held interest in classical music, even composing a piano concerto for Nicholas Angelich.

Together, they have produced a rich and varied programme around the songs of Kurt Weill, from Nanna’s Lied to Trouble Man, as well as the classics from The Threepenny Opera and Lost in the Stars.

This journey through three European languages brings the listener to the very beginnings of jazz, and features all-new arrangements and deft improvisations by pianist Baptiste Trotignon.

Lindsey and Trotignon also pay homage to three composers who, like Weill, all emigrated to the United States: Alma Mahler, Zemlinsky and Korngold.

London-based American mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey joins Alpha Classics for several recordings over the coming years.

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FAURÉ | FRANCK SONATAS FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO

TEDI PAPAVRAMI NELSON GOERNER

© Marie Staggat

Two great interpreters, poets and lovers of the French repertory and chamber music join forces here: the violinist Tedi Papavrami and the pianist Nelson Goerner. They have chosen to devote this programme to the two violin sonatas of Gabriel Fauré and the Sonata of César Franck.

ALPHA 271 MAY 2017

It was in 1875 that Fauré composed his First Sonata for violin and piano, characterised by its originality and its formal design, which marked the start of a new era for French chamber music.

In 1916, having continued to write for small ensembles all his life, he composed the Second Sonata, imbued with both heartfelt lyricism and complexity.

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Nine years after Fauré’s Sonata no.1, Franck – less prolific in the intimate chamber genre – composed his only sonata, now one of the most frequently played of all works for violin and piano.

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VISIONS ARIAS BY MASSENET, HALÉVY, NIEDERMEYER, WAGNER, BRUNEAU, SAINT-SAËNS, FRANCK, BIZET, FÉVRIER, GODARD AND DAVID

© Sandrine Expilly

VÉRONIQUE GENS MÜNCHNER RUNDFUNKORCHESTER HERVÉ NIQUET

ALPHA 279 JUNE 2017

After an album of French songs (Néère, Alpha 215) that earned her a Gramophone Award in 2016, Véronique Gens presents her new recital, this time with orchestra, which gives her an opportunity to display the maturity of her ‘Falcon’ soprano, the central tessitura typical of French Romantic opera, which takes its name from Cornélie Falcon, who created the works of Meyerbeer and Halévy staged in the 1830s.

1 CD

She pays tribute here to a number of composers whose unknown operas she was the first to reveal in projects mounted by the Palazzetto Bru Zane (which also coproduced the present recording), including David, Godard, Saint-Saëns and Halévy.

The programme selects arias from all the genres in vogue in the Romantic era: opera (Saint-Saëns, Halévy, Godard, Février), opéra-comique (David), oratorio (Franck, Massenet) and the cantata for the Prix de Rome (Bizet, Bruneau). A nod to Wagner and his Tannhäuser – in its French translation of the 1860s – completes this programme conducted by a longstanding colleague of the soprano, one of the leading specialists in French music, Hervé Niquet.

18

ALPHA COLLECTION III: 14 MORE TITLES REISSUED

Following on from the success of the Red and Yellow series (a total of twenty-eight reissues), which have restored to the limelight the treasures of the label’s Baroque music catalogues, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to renew acquaintance with further gems of the Baroque as well as a number of rarities. This third series also expands to embrace the Classical repertory (Mozart, Haydn etc.) and other cultures, notably those of the East, in recordings that form an integral part of Alpha’s identity and history.

The fourteen reissues are performed by the leading musicians in the relevant repertory; most of these discs received one or more press distinctions on their first release. They are accompanied by full booklets, with articles in three languages (English, French, German) and richly illustrated chronologies. A wide range of photographers have provided the cover illustrations for the series, this time with the colour blue as the unifying thread.

COLLECTION RELEASE: JUNE 2017

J. S. BACH - French Suites - Blandine Rannou (2 CDs) C. P. E. BACH - Sonatas for Violin and Fortepiano - Amandine Beyer - Edna Stern BARRIÈRE - Sonatas for Cello and Continuo - Les Basses Réunies - Bruno Cocset Blandine Rannou - Emmanuel Balssa…

BOESSET… - Je meurs sans mourir - Le Poème Harmonique - Vincent Dumestre CHEDEVILLE, HOTTETERRE, PHILIDOR… Le Berger Poète - Suites and Sonatas Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien - François Lazarevitch LOUIS COUPERIN - Suites for Harpsichord and Pavane - Skip Sempé DOWLAND - Lute Songs - Damien Guillon - Éric Bellocq HAYDN - Sonatas for Flute and Piano - Juliette Hurel - Hélène Couvert ISTANPITTA - Florentine Dances of the Trecento - Henri Agnel - Idriss Agnel - Djamchid Chemirani - Michael Nick…

LASSUS – Oracula – Daedalus - Roberto Festa MARAIS - Folies d’Espagne / Suite en mi / Le labyrinthe - Ensemble Spirale - Marianne Muller…

MOZART - Concertos for Two Pianos, Flute & Harp, Horn - Anima Eterna - Jos Van Immerseel…

RAYON DE LUNE - Music of the Umayyads - Les Aromates, Michèle Claude YEDID NEFESH - Amant de mon âme - Meirav Ben David-Harel - Yaïr Harel - Nima Ben David - Michèle Claude

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RICERCAR Ricercar was founded by Jérôme Lejeune in 1980 and the label swiftly became one of the major players in the rediscovery of early music.

“

Each Ricercar recording documents a moment in the history of music, one that can be experienced not only by listening but also by reading informative liner notes written with the general public in mind. RICERCAR’s aim has always been to seek out and make available unusual and unpublished works, although they have also recorded certain well-known works when new musicological discoveries have inspired their artists to a new style of performance or interpretation.

Each recording is made with the greatest respect possible for the history and origins of the work concerned; this goes from the use of the most authentic sources possible for the score to the choice of the musicians and the instruments that are most suited to the particular type of repertoire.

Ricercar’s recordings are produced by Jérôme Lejeune, its artistic director, who takes meticulous care that there is always a perfect symbiosis between the players themselves and the space in which the recording is made; this including the choice of natural acoustics according to their character and their suitably to the repertoire being recorded. RICERCAR fully respects the acoustic of its recording space and the particular timbres of its voices and the instruments: it has never used any form of sound filtration or artificial reverberation.

“

Ricercar is supported by the Ministère des Arts de la Scène du Ministère de la Fédération Wallonie Bruxelles.

THE HERITAGE OF MONTEVERDI LA FENICE JEAN TUBÉRY

These seven discs recorded between 1995 and 2000 make up a fabulous anthology of early seventeenth-century Italian music.

A large number of composers are gathered round the central figure of Claudio Monteverdi; while some of them, like Salomone Rossi, Biagio Marini and Dario Castello, are among the musicians with whom he worked in Mantua or Venice, others illustrate the extraordinary musical creativity of the period, whether it be Sigismondo d’India, Tarquinio Merula, Francesco Cavalli, Alessandro Grandi, or so many other lesser-known personalities, each of whom helped to build the rapidly growing edifice of Italian Baroque music.

RIC 374 JANUARY 2017

RICERCAR PLEIADES 7 CDs

EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT LUTHER AND THE MUSIC OF THE REFORMATION

VOX LUMINIS LIONEL MEUNIER BART JACOBS

RIC 376

FEBRUARY 2017

A two-CD set devoted to the Lutheran liturgical repertory from Martin Luther himself to Heinrich Schütz.

The first disc comprises compositions specific to the Lutheran liturgy: Deutsche Messe, Deutsches Magnificat, Deutsche Passion (the first German polyphonic Passion, by Joachim von Burck) and even a reconstruction of a Deutsches Requiem drawn from polyphonic works that set the same texts as those Brahms was later to use for his Deutsches Requiem.

The second disc presents a selection of motets arranged according to the liturgical calendar, from Advent to Trinity. These polyphonic pieces were written by a wide range of composers including Martin Luther, Andreas Hammerschmidt, Michael Praetorius, Joachim von Burck, Christoph Bernhardt, Heinrich Schütz, Thomas Selle, Melchior Franck, Caspar Othmayr, Michael Altenburg, Samuel Scheidt, Johann Hermann Schein and Johann Walter. The organist Bart Jacobs completes the programme with a few organ pieces by seventeenth-century composers.

DIGIBOOK 2 CDs

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GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN A PORTRAIT

RICERCAR CONSORT LA PASTORELLA CHŒUR DE CHAMBRE DE NAMUR LES AGRÉMENTS LINGUA FRANCA SYNTAGMA AMICI AEOLUS

RIC 375 FEBRUARY 2017

Georg Philipp Telemann is one of the composers whose cause Ricercar has always championed with fervour.

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of his death, Ricercar now presents a reissue of its vast repertory, which makes up a complete portrait of the output of this inspired contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach: his sonatas, trios, fantasias, concertos and suites written for all sorts of instruments are accompanied by several sacred compositions, cantatas, and a St Matthew Passion which, like a number of other works in the set, is released on disc for the first time.

RICERCAR PLEIADES 8 CDs

ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI PASSIO SECUNDUM JOHANNEM

GIUSEPPINA BRIDELLI MILLENIUM CHŒUR DE CHAMBRE DE NAMUR LEONARDO GARCÍA ALARCÓN

RIC 378 MARCH 2017

Alessandro Scarlatti’s St John Passion was the first Passion setting written in seventeenth-century Italy. Scarlatti treats the role of the Evangelist (composed in the mezzo-soprano register) in highly unusual fashion, giving his narrative numerous emotional passages. The Voice of Christ (bass) is invariably haloed by a string accompaniment. The version presented by Leonardo García Alarcón inserts meditations assigned to the chorus; these are taken from Scarlatti’s Responsories for Holy Week, polyphonic settings that reveal a little-known genre practised by this composer.

1 CD

23

GIROLAMO FRESCOBALDI ORGAN WORKS

BERNARD FOCCROULLE

RIC 372 MARCH 2017

While the organ works of Girolamo Frescobaldi have their roots in the polyphonic tradition of the Renaissance, few virtuosos of the early seventeenth century approached with such originality the expressive movement that opened the way to what we regard today as ‘Baroque music’. Frescobaldi transposed to the keyboard that feeling for affect and virtuosity which, in the domain of opera, radically disrupted all the conventions of vocal music. He championed a flexible performing style, freed of excessively rigorous constraints, and insisted that the musician must play ‘con affetti cantabili’ (with the affects of vocal music).

Unlike many other recordings of the works of Frescobaldi, which offer performances on organs of northern Italy, this one is played on three instruments from Rome and Umbria, recorded for the first time. The organ of Santa Barbara dei Librari in Rome (c.1600) is one of the rare surviving examples of a Roman instrument contemporary with Frescobaldi. The other two organs are those of the church of San Francesco in Trevi (Maestro Paolo di Pietropaolo da Montefalco, 1509) and the church of Cerreto di Spoleto (A. Belforti, 1580 and A. Maccioni, 1620).

1 CD

MARIN MARAIS PREMIER LIVRE DES PIÈCES DE VIOLE

FRANÇOIS JOUBERT-CAILLET L’ACHÉRON

Here is the start of a great adventure: the complete recording of the five books of pièces de viole of Marin Marais. The First Book, published in 1686, contains a dozen suites, two of which are scored for two bass viols and continuo. It also features a very moving Tombeau for ‘Monsieur Méliton’, probably one of Marais’s teachers, and a set of variations on a theme given to the composer by an ‘estranger’, which foreshadows one of the principal compositions of his Second Book, the Couplets des Folies d’Espagne.

RIC 379 APRIL 2017

DIGIBOX 3 CDs

24

CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI SALOMONE ROSSI BALLI & SONATE

CLEMATIS ZACHARY WILDER

RIC 377 APRIL 2017

When Claudio Monteverdi arrived at the court of Mantua, he was initially engaged as a viol player. This is an aspect of his musical personality that is too often forgotten. Yet his brother Giulio Cesare reminds us in a letter that his improvisations on the viol alla bastarda were remarkable. At the time of his arrival, instrumental music played an important role at the court, which was dominated by the personalities of several musicians, chief among them the violinist Salomone Rossi.

1 CD

This programme illustrates the richness of the instrumental repertory at the Mantua court with the compositions of this virtuoso. But Monteverdi too was a master in the domain of instrumental music, which he handled with exceptional skill, as may be heard in the ballets of L’Orfeo, in the Ballo delle ingrate and in certain madrigals, such as Tempro la cetra, where the concertante role of instruments is fundamental. This evocation of music in Mantua at the time of Monteverdi also includes the irresistible Ballo di Mantova, a popular song that went through countless instrumental arrangements.

JOHANNES TINCTORIS SECRET CONSOLATIONS

LE MIROIR DE MUSIQUE BAPTISTE ROMAIN

RIC 380 JUNE 2017

If Johannes Tinctoris (Jehan le Taintenier, 1435-1511) is known today as one of the most renowned music theorists of his time, he was also a fascinated observer of the musical practices of the Renaissance. After studying in Orléans, he settled in Cambrai, Liège and finally Naples, where his gifts as a composer prompted him to compile a chansonnier dedicated to Princess Beatrice of Aragon, daughter of King Ferdinand I of Naples. This programme retraces his career through his extremely varied output: French and Italian song, Mass movements and instrumental pieces.

1 CD

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FUGA LIBERA With a repertoire stretching from late baroque to contemporary music, and supported by eminent actors of the European musical life Fuga Libera’s catalogue presents a growing collection of publications mixing classical music with other music genres.

“

Fuga Libera was founded in 2004. With its catalogue of more than 80 titles, it is one of Belgium’s most lively and active labels. The catalogue reaches from the baroque to the romantic repertoire. Fuga Libera invests in the future by profiling itself explicitly as a platform for young musicians. Creative and durable collaborations with musicians who are at the beginning of their professional careers, as well as with musicians who already developed an international reputation form the heart and the soul of the label. Through an open dialogue with partners such as festivals, concert halls, and music schools Fuga Libera plays an important role in the development of musical talent. Moreover Fuga Libera is a platform for experiment, where different musicians can meet each other, exchange musical ideas, and develop new musical alliances.

“

THE GERMAN FLUTE 1824-1846 KUHLAU | SCHUBERT | KUMMER | FÜRSTENAU

ANNE PUSTLAUK PIET KUIJKEN

The flute has changed in the course of the 19th century as has no other musical instrument. From a conical wooden flute with only one key the flute gradually developed into a cylindrical metal flute with a complex key system – the Boehm system. In the course of this development many different types of flute existed simultaneously.

FUG 738 JANUARY 2017

The technique of playing the German flute (or simple system flute) differs from that of the Boehm flute especially in the use of fingerings. For one note several different fingerings can be used in order to simplify passages or to adjust the intonation. One could also produce different effects according to the different tone colours of the fingerings.

Anne Pustlauk has devoted herself to the simple system flute and its performance practice in the context of an artistic doctorate.

The results can be heard on this recording.

CATALOGUE DE PLANTES SUITE BOB VERSCHUEREN

‘I often say that my development is (no pun intended) arborescent. Each stage leads me on to another, but also generates interconnecting paths.’

Bob Verschueren

FUG 739 FEBRUARY 2017

What if we started out from the postulate that plants can be, for the duration of an album, materials that are not only visible but also audible? Such is the intention here of the visual artist and master of the ephemeral Bob Verschueren, in his second opus devoted to the sound pictures that he composes and organises on the basis of manipulation of vegetal matter. Crossbreeding the arts of sound and vision once again, and using the disc as a source of both inspiration and constraint, he invites us to immerse ourselves in his exciting and essential relationship between nature and matter. Come and discover the astonishing result of this sonic treatment of elements of sugar cane, hornbeam, oak, endive, fennel and many other species!

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PIANO E FORTE BRAM DE LOOZE

© Alexander Popelier

Piano e forte, the new project of the talented jazz pianist Bram de Looze, combines creativity, spontaneity and passion. Bram reinvents jazz composition and improvisation through the unique decision to play on three different period pianos from the collection of the instrument maker Chris Maene, each of which necessitates a very different stylistic approach from the other two.

In building his complex musical structures, mingling jazz and contemporary music, he chooses to mould his playing style according to the action, timbre, resonance and volume of each instrument. Navigating between the warm, rounded sonorities of an original Érard of 1838, the precise and crystalline dynamics of a reproduction of an eighteenth-century instrument by Anton Walter, and the transparent sound of a copy of a Pleyel Concert Grand dating from 1843, the young prodigy of Belgian jazz achieves a balanced alternation of moods, mixing fragments of works or idiomatic expressive devices of the nineteenth century with spontaneous ideas while still preserving the specific character of each instrument.

With the free spirit for which he is well known, Bram de Looze has elaborated here a personal work that is at once innovative and profound.

FUG 740 MARCH 2017

1 CD

BLASPHEMY DUPARC | ENESCO | KOECHLIN | SAINT-SAËNS CHAMINADE | CHAUSSON | D’INDY | RAVEL GOUNOD

© Mireille Roobaert

SARAH LAULAN MACIEJ PIKULSI QUATUOR HERMÈS ELINA KUKSHA

‘Des hoquets, un vomissement, l’ironie féroce et pimpante, et de la fierté s’exaspérant en génie et jusqu’à quelle gaîté!’

Verlaine, Les Poètes maudits

FUG 741 APRIL 2017

Wishing to externalise the existential malaise of the Fin-deSiècle, modernist composers like Ravel, Duparc, Chausson, Enesco and Saint-Saëns found in the texts of the poets of their time the words and symbols with which to express it. Onirism, darkness, but also humour, provocation and cynicism; new languages emerged, forms sought an identity. It was a time for experimentation and assertion.

The contralto Sarah Laulan, winner of Third Prize at the prestigious Queen Elisabeth International Competition, presents a rich and sensitive interpretation of these crepuscular mélodies in which the omnipotence of the elements and of inner revolt are deployed. At once disturbing and galvanising, they paint a varied picture of a fascinating episode in the history of music.

1 CD

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KALEIDOSCOPE BACH | TÔN-THÂT TIÊT | YSAŸE | KHACHATURIAN HONEGGER | ALBÉNIZ

ELSA GRETHER

© Jean-Baptiste Millot

AN INTENSE AND FASCINATING EXPLORATION OF THE MYRIAD FACETS OF THE VIOLIN OVER THE CENTURIES Kaleidoscope. That single word encapsulates Elsa Grether’s aim in her new album: to illustrate the full expressive range of her violin by exploring its repertory in all its stylistic diversity. From Bach’s famous Chaconne to Tôn-Thât Tiêt’s contemporary idiom in Métal terre eau, by way of Eugène Ysaÿe, Aram Khachaturian, Arthur Honegger and Isaac Albéniz, the violinist’s third release for Fuga Libera offers a cocktail of colours and timbres. She charms her listeners with an invariably elegant sound and firmly sculpted lines as she invites us to explore this multifaceted instrument. A voyage of discovery across time, space and aesthetics that will appeal to the widest audience!

FUG 742 MAY 2017

1 CD

SLAVIC SOUL ˇ ˇ ANTONÍN DVORÁK | LEOŠ JANÁCEK

JAN MICHIELS

© Michael Seum

It was in Prague and Brno, the two largest cities in what is now the Czech Republic, that Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček – the principal representatives of the nineteenth-century Czech national school, along with Bedřich Smetana – launched their respective compositional careers.

While Janáček, thirteen years younger than Dvořák, saw the latter as a father figure, the two men shared the same poetic Slavic soul. Indeed, Janáček said of Dvořák: ‘I could exchange his personality for his works; it is as if his melodies came straight from my heart. Nothing can ever break such a bond.’

FUG 743 JUNE 2017

1 CD

In his fourth solo recording for Fuga Libera, Jan Michiels places this shared Slavic consciousness and musicality in the perspective of the almost filial relationship between the two composers, for example by interspersing the pieces from two eminently lyrical cycles: Dvořák’s Poetic Tone Pictures op.85 (1889) and Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path, JW VIII/17 (1900-11).

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ARCANA Founded in 1992 by the legendary Michel Bernstein, Arcana is devoted to the exploration of lesser-known composers from the Medieval to the beginning of the twentieth-century mostly focusing on Italian repertoire and interpreters.

“

Hidden, secret, mysterious… the word Arcana, from Latin arcanus, clearly summarizes the mission of the label: to broaden our knowledge of the repertoire and unearth what is still concealed and forgotten within it, from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, distinguishing masterpieces form trivial works, and involving some of the biggest names on the historically informed performance.

But Arcana has also succeeded in making an important contribution to the standard repertoire, particularly Viennese, most notably the first complete recording on period instruments of Joseph Haydn’s string quartets (performed by Festetics Quartet) and Franz Schubert’s piano sonatas (Paul Badura-Skoda).

Often based on ground-breaking research; each release is meticulously studied, the liner notes feature contributions of leading experts in each field. Not to mention the sound quality, one of the trade-marks of the label founded by Michel Bernstein.

Since the beginning, Arcana has also shown a clear focus on both Italy, with its huge and multifaceted musical heritage (yet to be explored and discovered), and the Italian performers: Fabio Biondi, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Fabio Bonizzoni yesterday; La Reverdie, Ensemble Zefiro, Gaetano Nasillo and an impressive line-up of new talents from the younger generation, today.

“

MONTEVERDI IL SESTO LIBRO DE MADRIGALI (1614)

CONCERTO ITALIANO RINALDO ALESSANDRINI

Rinaldo Alessandrini is one of today’s most eminent Monteverdi authorities, and his highly acclaimed recordings with Concerto Italiano are now widely recognised as a reference point for music lovers all over the world. Recent achievements include the completion of Monteverdi’s trilogy of operas (directed by Robert Wilson) at La Scala in Milan and at the Opéra National de Paris, and a triumphal concert tour in Australia and New Zealand with the Vespro della Beata Vergine.

A 425 JANUARY 2017

To mark the 450th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi’s birth, Arcana is proud to reissue the seminal recording of the Sixth Book of Madrigals performed by Concerto Italiano, which is also one of Arcana’s bestsellers.

1 CD

Rinaldo Alessandrini describes the Sixth Book as the book of separation: permanent in the case of death; temporary in the case of lovers at daybreak. It is the book of poignant expression which culminates in the cycles of lamenti, whose autobiographical character is well known: the successive deaths of Monteverdi’s wife (Claudia Cattaneo) and his favourite singer (Caterina Martinelli). Its density of expression, its ‘italianità’, not exempt from theatricality, by turns luminous and despairing, make it the place where interpretation is the fundamental element, capable of overwhelming our contemporaries.

IL BARBARINO MUSICA PER LIUTO E VIOLA DA MANO NEL CINQUECENTO NAPOLETANO

PAUL KIEFFER, LUTE & VIOLA DA MANO

AD 105 FEBRUARY 2017

Over 100 years after the Inventione et usu musicae (c.1481) by Johannes Tinctoris and the visits of famed lutenists Conrad Paumann and Pietrobono de Burzellis, the city of Naples remained a strong centre of instrumental music, especially known for its lute players. Scipione Cerreto’s 1601 list of «routsanding lute players of the city of Naples » included fifteen players, four of whom left pieces for the lute. After Francesco da Milano visited the city in 1536 to print his lute book, the leading figure to emerge in the next generation was the enigmatic knight Fabrizio Dentice (born c.1540), a top-notch lutenist of «rexcessive self-esteem » yet «rprodigious facility ». Along with his fellow Neapolitans Giulio Severino and Francesco Cardone, he produced a unique style of lute music, far removed from that of central and northern Italy. A couple of large lute manuscripts that portray the sophisticated and uniquely dense style of lute playing from this beautiful southern city – a style unheard by modern ears until now – have recently come to light.

33

SEI SUONATE À CEMBALO CERTATO E VIOLINO SOLO JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

CHIARA ZANISI GIULIA NUTI

A 426 FEBRUARY 2017

The violinist Chiara Zanisi works with the finest early music ensembles, notably the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Ton Koopman, with whom she has just finished a long tour performing the Six Brandenburg Concertos. She now devotes her first solo recording to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Sonatas for Harpsichord and Violin. Alongside her is Giulia Nuti, among the most brilliant harpsichordists and scholars in Italy, whose solo CD Les Sauvages: Harpsichords in pre-Revolutionary Paris (DHM) won a Diapason d’Or, among other awards. The kernel from which this project grew is their strongly shared idea that, in addition to great stylistic richness and invention, Bach’s music possesses an aura of magic and an almost divine form. Thus, in this valuable and elegant reading, it is clearly their intention to underline in the simplest way the grandeur of the writing. Even the choice of sound aesthetic, beautifully realised under the supervision of Fabio Framba, opts for the ‘real’ with a ‘pure’, ‘speaking’ sound, warm and full of harmonics. The attractions of this precious version of the Six Sonatas, played on a G. Gagliano violin of 1761 and a harpsichord by K. Hill, are enhanced by a bonus track: the Cantabile, un poco Adagio from the early version of Sonata VI in G major.

2 CDs

ARIAS FOR NICOLINI CARLO VISTOLI TALENTI VULCANICI STEFANO DEMICHELI

© Philippe Delval

The creator of the title roles of Handel’s Rinaldo and Amadigi, Nicolò Grimaldi (Naples, 1673 – Naples, 1732), known as Nicolini, was the leading castrato of his time, an outstanding artist praised as a fine actor as well as a singer. A generation older than Carlo Broschi (Farinelli), Gaetano Majorano (Caffarelli) and Giovanni Carestini, he possessed exceptional vocal agility and virtuosity, contributing significantly to the establishment of the legend of the castratos’ virtuosity. The young Italian countertenor and rising star of Baroque opera Carlo Vistoli offers us a perfect picture of him in this anthology retracing the key moments of his career, including extracts from Handel’s operas but also, among others, from Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s first opera, Salustia, which Nicolino would have sung at Naples had he not fallen ill and died during the rehearsals.

He is accompanied by Talenti Vulcanici (the newly formed resident ensemble of the Centro di Musica Antica - Fondazione Pietà de’ Turchini di Napoli), here galvanised by its harpsichordist and principal conductor Stefano Demicheli, a familiar name on the Fuga Libera label, on which he released three successful recordings with his own ensemble Dolce & Tempesta.

This album marks the beginning of a new series dedicated to Neapolitan music, in collaboration with the Neapolitan Foundation.

A 427 MARCH 2017

1 CD

34

CIFRAS IMAGINARIAS MÚSICA PARA TAÑER A DOS VIHUELAS

ARIEL ABRAMOVICH JACOB HERINGMAN

© Susanna Pell

A leading vihuela specialist, the Argentinian virtuoso Ariel Abramovich has already devoted two albums to the favourite instrument of the Iberian Renaissance, the first on Arcana (Esteban Daça, El Parnasso, A316, 2002) and the second on Carpe Diem (Diego Pisador, Si me llaman, 2009). For this third instalment he is joined by one of the world’s most respected and innovative solo lutenists, Jacob Heringman, for a vihuela duo project which is the result of years of research and performing.

While there is a significant number of publications for two lutes from the sixteenth century, only one of the seven collections for vihuela de mano includes duets, and it is precisely that collection that was the main source of inspiration for this project.

The performers, both highly experienced with intabulations of sixteenth-century music, decided to recreate an ‘imaginary’ book of vihuela duets, following the taste and practice of the ancient masters, who through a notation system of ‘numbers’ used to arrange works by the composers they listened to and played. Cifras Imaginarias is the poetic name they have given to an imaginary music collection of vihuela duos of the kind that might have been published in the mid-sixteenth century.

A 428

MARCH 2017

1 CD

FERNANDO SOR FLORILEGIUM. GUITAR WORKS

FRANCESCO ROMANO CHITARRA LUIS PANORMO 1835 (CONSERVATORIO DI MUSICA, FIRENZE)

© Alice Venturi

Francesco Romano, lute and guitarist of the ensemble Gli Incogniti since its founding, devotes this album to Fernando Sor (1778-1839), the most important composer for guitar of the Classical Era, his style strongly influenced by the great composers of his time, especially Mozart. The extraordinary quality of his deep inspiration and sensitivity excels in his compositions of modest dimensions that contain a true poetic world. A significant selection of his works, including Variations on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 9, Six arias from Die Zauberflöte, the Fantasia, Op. 7 and a selection of his etudes and other short masterpieces are played on a marvellous original guitar of 1835 made by Luis Panormo, one of the Fernando Sor’s recommended luthiers, from the collection of the Conservatorio di Musica in Florence.

AD 106 MARCH 2017

35

THE FIERY GENIUS NEAPOLITAN INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC FOR 1, 2, 3, AND 4 VIOLINS (1650-1750)

ENSEMBLE AURORA ENRICO GATTI

© Walter Capelli

The central role of Naples in the history of vocal music has so far overshadowed a rich tradition of instrumental music; only in recent years has musicological research begun bringing it to light once more, demonstrating that Naples also played a crucial role in the field of instrumental music, no less relevant than other centres more often associated with this repertory, such as Rome and Venice.

This CD presents a voyage of discovery into a musical heritage that is even less known, but of the highest value. The new project conceived by Enrico Gatti focuses on the specific scoring for three or four violins (without viola) and continuo which was so typical of the Neapolitan School. Precious gems are unearthed here (including the only solo violin sonata by Giovanni Carlo Cailò, in its first modern recording), and this programme makes many different exponents of Neapolitan instrumental composition accessible to a wider public, from the generation of Pietro Marchitelli (slightly older than Corelli) and Giovanni Carlo Cailò to Francesco Paolo Supriani, Angelo Ragazzi, Nicola Fiorenza and Leonardo Leo. The musical forms range from church sonatas in the strict style to concertos of more modern conception, thus providing an enjoyable and varied listening experience.

A 429 APRIL 2017

1 CD

AYRES & SONGS HENRY PURCELL

JILL FELDMAN NIGEL NORTH

SARAH CUNNINGHAM DAVITT MORONEY

© Malcolm Crowthers

It is an important moment in the life of a singer when she is able to confront the standard repertory. After years spent studying theatre and music in Shakespeare’s England under the guidance of musicologist Philip Brett, Jill Feldman recorded two programmes of Henry Purcell’s music in 1992, reissued here as a double CD. Many of the ‘Ayres and Songs’ from Orpheus Britannicus are connected to the English theatrical tradition. In the earliest piece on this CD, ‘From Silent Shades’, and the latest, ‘From Rosy Bow’rs’, we hear one theatrical tradition – placing the voice of truth in the mouth of a madman. In the same way, we hear the wisdom of Touchstone in As You Like It, of Feste in Twelfth Night, and of King Lear’s Fool. This programme, superbly accompanied by lutenist Nigel North, searches for that wisdom throughout.

In the Harmonia Sacra recording, Purcell’s sacred hymns are interspersed with his complete organ works played by Davitt Moroney, with whom Jill Feldman had collaborated ever since their meeting in 1975 as part of Philip Brett’s ensemble at Berkeley in California.

A 430 APRIL 2017

2 CDs

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SANTA PELAGIA THE STRADELLA PROJECT VOL.4

ENSEMBLE MARE NOSTRUM ANDREA DE CARLO

A 431 MAY 2017

With this fourth instalment of the Stradella Project, Andrea De Carlo and Ensemble Mare Nostrum continue their exploration of the oratorio output, following the recent rediscoveries of San Giovanni Crisostomo and Santa Editta.

A pretty dancing-girl at the imperial court of Antioch in Syria, Pelagia, is the object of rivalry between an evil angel, Mondo (the World), urging her to enjoy life to the full before old age destroys her beauty, and Bishop Nonno of Edessa, who with the help of a good angel, Religione, invites her to a life in the service of God. Pelagia succumbs to the flattery offered by Mondo, but just as the latter is celebrating his victory, she retires unexpectedly to a lonely cave in the wilderness where she can dedicate the rest of her life to the loving service of God. Stradella cannot resist revealing his point of view about this sudden change, giving the oratorio a surprise ending.

Soprano Roberta Mameli offers us a complex and seductive portrayal of the title role, surrounded by a distinguished cast including Sergio Foresti as Mondo, Raffaele Pe as Religione and Luca Cervoni as Nonno.

As in previous instalments, the recording was made within the framework of the Alessandro Stradella International Festival in Nepi, the composer’s birthplace.

1 CD

HANDEL

WATER MUSICK

TELEMANN

WASSERMUSIK

ZEFIRO ALFREDO BERNARDINI

A 432 JUNE 2017

Zefiro has already proved its strong affinity with Georg Philipp Telemann’s music, and the ensemble’s recording of his Ouvertures a 8 (Arcana A 371) was awarded a Gramophone Editor’s Choice. As Julie Anne Sadie pointed out, ‘the muchvaunted lean muscularity of the Ensemble Zefiro performances favours the wind instruments and, when joined with one-to-apart strings, produces a freshly balanced sonority that alters our experience of these works’.

1 CD

The 250th anniversary of Telemann’s death offers now a neat incentive to re-release this successful recording – originally issued on the Ambroisie label – on which his Wassermusik, generally referred to as Hamburg Ebb and Flow, is coupled with Handel’s more familiar aquatic suites. Both are occasional pieces composed within a few years of each other, the former written to celebrate the centenary of the Admiralty in Hamburg, and the latter for royal water parties on the Thames. Unlike Handel’s work, Telemann’s suite attempts to evoke images of water, aided by references in the titles to scenes and characters associated with the sea, and may therefore be considered as ‘programme music’.

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PHI Philippe Herreweghe assumes the artistic direction of this catalogue which holds exclusive rights for his recordings with Collegium Vocale Gent, l’Orchestre des ChampsElysées and deFilharmonie.

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Philippe Herreweghe takes responsibility for the artistic direction of the label Phi which holds exclusive rights over his recordings with Collegium Vocale Gent and l’Orchestre des Champs-Elysées. By creating this collection, Philippe Herreweghe wanted to freely materialize the fruits of a long career of musical research and experiences. Outhere Music enthusiastically supports him in this endeavour. The output covers important romantic choral works, Flemish polyphony, the great Bach and a smattering of recording produced by Philippe’s friends and disciples, all to great press and public acclaim.

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SYMPHONIES NO.2 & 4 JOHANNES BRAHMS

ORCHESTRE DES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES PHILIPPE HERREWEGHE

LPH 025 FEBRUARY 2017

Although the symphony was the most prestigious instrumental genre of his time, Brahms avoided it for many years. In 1872, when he was already more than forty years old and was widely acknowledged for his chamber and choral music, he observed: ‘I will never write a symphony! You can’t imagine what it’s like to hear a giant treading behind you.’ The giant was of course Beethoven, at once an inspiration and a source of intimidation for composers of Brahms’s generation.

Fortunately, however, he went back on his promise a few years later with his First Symphony, followed by three more composed between 1876 and 1885. The two works presented here are the Second Symphony, sometimes sombre, sometimes radiant, and the Fourth, a genuine masterpiece of the genre.

1 CD

This disc, recorded on period instruments under the masterly direction of Philippe Herreweghe, is released to coincide with a double anniversary: as a prelude to the Flemish conductor’s seventieth birthday, it also celebrates the twenty-fifth year of existence of one of his favourite ensembles: the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées.

MOTETTEN BWV 225-230 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

COLLEGIUM VOCALE GENT PHILIPPE HERREWEGHE

LPH 950 MARCH 2017

FIRST VINYL RELEASE ON PHI! To launch Philippe Herreweghe’s birthday year, we turn the spotlight once more on one of his most accomplished recordings: Bach’s Motets BWV 225-230. Recorded in 2011 in the splendid acoustics of the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin, this interpretation is accompanied by period instruments and is the result of intense reflection concerning the performing forces: Philippe Herreweghe sometimes uses a small number of singers per part, sometimes a larger group, according to the needs of the motet in question. He sees these pieces in terms of continuous research, in which ‘several approaches are possible and even necessary if one wishes to make this marvellous music sound its best, and especially for a recording’.

DOUBLE LP

For the greater pleasure of the eyes and ears of turntable lovers, these masterpieces by the Kantor of Leipzig now appear in a novel incarnation, subtly combining the label’s new and modern graphic line with the timeless style of the vinyl format.

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PHILIPPE HERREWEGHE CAMILLE DE RIJCK

© Michiel Hendrickx

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PHILIPPE HERREWEGHE! To mark Philippe Herreweghe’s seventieth birthday, Phi is releasing a magnificent book-CD in his honour! In a series of interviews with Camille De Rijck, Philippe Herreweghe sums up his musical trajectory by offering the reader his reflections, intermingling musical and personal considerations. A selection of archive illustrations to delight the eyes and an updated biography complete the contents of the book, which is published in four languages (English, French, German and Dutch).

LPH 026 APRIL 2017

A five-disc compilation of extracts chosen and discussed by the conductor himself provides an musical counterpoint to the text.

The selection enables you to explore a whole life through the finest works of such composers as Lassus, Schein, Bach, Beethoven, Mahler, Dvořák and Stravinsky. Thanks to the longstanding close collaboration between Philippe Herreweghe and his favourite ensembles – Collegium Vocale Gent, the Orchestre des ChampsÉlysées and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic – this anthology of his most remarkable interpretations is also an opportunity to experience at leisure the extraordinary palette of colours and timbres that he invariably succeeds in obtaining from them, and transports us to the very heart of the Flemish conductor’s inner world.

BOOK + 5 CDs

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AEON

A the cutting edge of contemporary and medieval music.

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As the present catalogue attests, our record label, ĂŚon, from Notre Dame Mass by Machaut to Patterns In A Chromatic Field by Morton Feldman, is characterized by our love of music and our passion for musical creation. Founded by Kaisa and Damien Pousset in 2001, the catalogue is including today more than 120 albums. Our label is patiently pursuing an editorial approach based on developing two complementary collections: one, strictly contemporary, devoted to monographs on 20th- and 21st-century composers; the other, open to a broader repertoire, mainly medieval music, and based on the singularity of selected artists, thoroughly involved with the life of the label.

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PASCAL DUSAPIN QUARTET VI «HINTERLAND» QUARTET VII «OPEN TIME»

ARDITTI QUARTET ORCHESTRE PHILHARMONIQUE DE RADIO FRANCE PASCAL ROPHÉ

AECD 1753 MAY 2017

With this album coupling his Sixth and Seventh string quartets, the æon label completes its recording of all the quartets of Pascal Dusapin with the Arditti Quartet. This second disc follows the earlier recording of his first five works in the genre, released in 2009. Complicity, transmission, comprehension: Pascal Dusapin’s output has been so familiar to and closely associated with these musicians since the 1980s (six of the works were composed for them) that it has become inseparable from them. The present edition reveals a trajectory that has lasted more than thirty years now and has established a coherent corpus over time. It helps the listener to grasp some of the composer’s deep-seated aspirations and the evolution of his style.

1 CD

PASCAL DUSAPIN ITEM

ARNE DEFORCE BENJAMIN DIELTJENS

AECD 1756 MAY 2017

For the French composer Pascal Dusapin, making music means becoming another. It is a vitalist act in a world of constant change where all is movement and returns to the movement that engendered it. What is at stake in music, says the composer, is to become (the) other through listening, to become the other of the instrument.

In the first place, this collection of pieces for solo cello offers a wide-ranging insight into the exceptional nature of his imaginative melodic universe. From the avant-garde expressive tumult influenced by Iannis Xenakis or the more intuitive, Scelsilike sonic flux of his works of the 1980s to the new possibilities presented, after his discovery of traditional song, by the modes of Arabic, Armenian and Occitan music, the pieces on this disc create an immediate auditory fascination and clearly illustrate the multiple expressive voices of the instrument.

This music is distinguished by its infinitely inventive flux, its fascinating melodic contours, shifting between an energy of entrancement and the delicacy of more refined textures in seductive melodic surprises. We hear a remarkably imaginative sound-world that leads us towards other ways of looking at ourselves, other ways of looking at listening. All music remains a mysterious art. The issue at stake in ‘becoming music’ is the experience of sound in infinitely subtle listening.

1 CD

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OUTNOTE Embracing contemporary musical expression throughout the entire contemporary landscape of creative music, OUTNOTE aims to transcribe the stimulating aesthetic vitality of our age faithfully and in the finest detail...

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Outnote Records, a label devoted to jazz, reflects all the vitality of creation today with the highest standards in terms of artistic choices and realisation, combined with the openness to innovation that constitutes the very essence of this ‘most learned type of popular music’.

For Outnote Records, recording still represents the medium by which a musician propels his inspiration from the development stage to that of an elaborated work, captured in a particular moment of vast time without, for all that, being rigid.

The label has given voice to some of the most creative pianists in the jazz sphere: Richie Beirach, Bill Carrothers, Joachim Kuhn, Philippe Le Baraillec, Ronnie Lynn Patterson, Eric Watson, and Kenny Werner, in particular in the ‘Jazz & The City’ collection. It has proposed creative groups such as Dave Liebman’s legendary Quest or the electro group After In Paris, and launched the young singer Leila Martial, particularly well received by the media.

This desire for openness and plurality is also manifest in the realisation of projects such as drummer Stéphane Galland’s ‘Lobi’, which takes inspiration from world music, and strong works of the jazz of this early 21st century by the quintet of bass player Stéphane Kérécki or Jean-Paul Celea’s trio. An important place is also reserved for young musicians who will be tomorrow’s ambassadors of this jazz that no longer recognizes boundaries and quite naturally rubs shoulders with a multitude of different styles in current music (electro, hip-hop, rock, pop), of which the group LABtrio is an excellent example.

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LABTRIO NATURE CITY

© Alexander Popelier

LABtrio talking about its new project: ‘For our latest album we explored the world of chamber music, with a lot of elaborated compositions and extensive improvisations. This time, we are figuring out who we have become after ten years of LABtrio. Over the years, we have built a varied repertoire and a uniqueness we want to stress with our new album. The challenge is to expand and dig in our identity and our story as a trio, as well as to breathe new life into it.’

OUT 624 MARCH 2017

To accomplish this, Lander, Anneleen and Bram look for lyricism and drive, melodies and beats, that project LABtrio. Inspired by different musical genres, ranging from classical music to pop and electronics, they selected their favourite ‘non-guilty pleasures’.

1 CD

When all these ingredients come together, one can expect a third album that will be a range of new collectively composed works and older never-heard compositions, recycled and refreshed by the band members, combined with some covers, on which the musicians wanted to leave their own mark.

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STRANGE FRUIT FABRIZIO CASSOL OUMOU SANGARE | MARIE DAULNE | DAVID LINX BABA SISSOKO | CLARON MCFADDEN | KRIS DANE MELISSA GIVENS | LA CHORALINE

© D.R.

Strange Fruit is a project of the Protean composer-saxophonist Fabrizio Cassol, which takes the form of a concept album that could be described as ‘World Opera’. This songbook was elaborated over a period of more than four years, in the company of a group of renowned singers who wrote or co-wrote each piece in their own, very different expressive and stylistic traditions. The title, Strange Fruit, refers to the song of the same name, majestically embodied by Billie Holiday, which remains an essential musical masterpiece as well as a humanistic symbol.

On the album we find an inspired version of the original, dating from before ‘Lady Day’ along with another, a sort of colourful fresco inspired by her interpretation as well as by Bach chorales or Malian men’s choruses, and accompanied by the heavenly voices of the forty girls of La Choraline.

OUT 660 MARCH 2017

1 CD

The association between Strange Fruit and Some Days, a poem by James Baldwin and a major piece of inner feeling, doubt and the possibility of a salutary catharsis, creates an axis, a ‘mirror of sense’, around which are woven the other themes such as spirituality (‘Sehet Jesus’, ‘If Jesus...’), passionate love (‘Soukora’), the call to gather and freedom (‘Didadi horns’), poverty, abandon, child neglect (‘Les enfants de la rue’), dreams and self-questioning (‘I can’t sleep tonight’), celebration and respect for elders (‘Farka’).

The album, originally released on the prestigious Blue Note label (2012), was produced by the pianist Eric Legnini.

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