![Nektar - Remember The Future (Deluxe Edition) (1973/2023) [High Fidelity Pure Audio Blu-Ray Disc]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2024/05/01/NjktMTk3MS5qcGVn.jpg)
La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton – Purcell: Devotional Songs & Anthems (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:56 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare
Purcell’s devotional songs for three male voices are still little known and shrouded in a certain mystery. Yet these meditations on the frailty of human existence are among his finest and most moving works. Gifted with profound intuition of the emotions that can emerge from the union of text and music, this formidable composer, who understood and served the vocal music of his time so well, continues here the work begun by the masters of the preceding generation such as Henry Lawes.
Read more
La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton – Marin Marais: Pièces de viole (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:29 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare
Marin Marais, “chamber viola player to the King”, and a talented composer is the author of this rich work full of contrasts, which forms the bridge, in the French viola tradition, between the generation of pioneers (with Saint-Colombe at their head) and the generation of the last French viola players (such as Forqueray or Caix d’Hervelois). This selection gives us an insight into the art of Marais – who was recognised in his own time as a technically gifted and brilliant musician – by way of his two Livres de viole, published in 1717 and 1725 respectively. It was in this period, which was both especially artistically fruitful but also unstable and subject to all sorts of political, economic and social turmoil, that Marais brought out his two last works. This album brings together a good number of strikingly original pieces, in particular from the Suite d’un goût étranger, a real introduction to the world of tonalities. The viola responds very differently to different tones: each tonality has its own very particular effect in terms of musical rhetoric: the Paraza in D minor sounds opulent and full, the Badinage in F sharp minor fragile and uncertain. Special mention should also go to a rare and stunning piece called Le Tact, which requires a curious sort of left-handed pizzicato without any help from the right (which he calls “tact”, a forerunner of very modern techniques). This is where Marais shows his particular genius, because he loves the instrument’s sensitive, vulnerable instrument, which he explores with great poetry. Founded by theorbist Benjamin Perrot and the viola player Florence Bolton, La Rêveuse (taking its name from the final piece of this album) is an ensemble which specialises in the artistic heritage of the 17th and 18th Centuries, periods which are rich in experiences and artistic inventions of all kinds.
Read more
La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot & Florence Bolton – Circa 1700: Purcell & his Generation (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:14 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare
At the end of the Seventeenth Century, London became a city full of promise, the stuff that dreams were made of: theatres and concerts were packed every night and the music publishing market was flourishing.
This great European capital at the height of its economic expansion was extremely attractive to the foreign musicians who settled there in large numbers. It provided a most favourable context for the development of instrumental music, fuelled by the final flowering of the English tradition and by the latest European innovations.
La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot – Dietrich Buxtehude: Sonates en trio – Manuscrits d’Uppsala (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:23 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical, Baroque Era
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare
Dietrich Buxtehude was a key figure of the north German instrumental repertory for violin and viol. It was he who firmly established the prestige of the German trio sonata by introducing into it the stylus phantasticus, that highly contrasted and dramatic instrumental language in which imagination and virtuosity reign supreme.
Read more
La Reveuse – Louis de Caix d’Hervelois, in the footsteps of Marin Marais (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:08:45 minutes | 1,99 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
After a first disc devoted to English music, La Rêveuse introduces us to the sound world of Louis de Caix d’Hervelois. As heir to Marin Marais and one of his most brilliant pupils, Caix brought the bass viol new prestige in an era that was gradually abandoning the instrument. This composer skilled in expressing the elegance and grace of the Enlightenment era left us a substantial and varied corpus of music, a vivid portrait gallery in which bass viol, pardessus de viole and flute shine with especial lustre.
Read more
La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton & Maïlys de Villoutreys – Buxtehude: Cantates pour voix seule – Manuscrits d’Uppsala (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:22 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare
In the Seventeenth Century, Buxtehude and his contemporaries composed an innovative sacred repertory for solo voice, nurtured by Italian cantatas, rhetoric and drama, which brought renown to the Hanseatic cities of north Germany and inspired the young Bach.
Read more
La Reverdie and Christophe Deslignes – L’Occhio del Cor (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:54 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Arcana
Francesco Landini was the most famous Florentine Trecento composer, known to being a multi-instrumentalist, notably a virtuoso on the organ. As known, he lost his sight at the age of 7 but, despite his disability, he excelled in the study of music and all liberal arts.Might the condition of blindness have affected the poetic production of Landini? LaReverdie together with Christophe Deslignes, investigate this hypothesis, with a new project that presents both well known masterpieces and pieces never recorded before, searching signs that might be eventually impressed in the verses and the music of Magister Coecus by the loss of his sight. The reference to the eyes from literary topos becomes in many Landini’s texts a melancholic poetic expedient to express the distance, the absence or the loss of the beloved woman, that only “the heart’s eye” (L’Occhio del Cor) is able to imagine. A project which fills the recent recording void on a fundamental author at the sunset of the Middle Ages, reread through a perspective never explored until now. A passionate work on the strict bond between poetry and music, well explained by Davide Daolmi, is associated to a necessary musicological research about sources.
Read more
La Quintina & Jérémie Couleau – Heavenly Songes (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:45 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Paraty
Created in 2019, the ensemble takes its name from an ideal of Sardinian music. The quintina is this fifth voice produced, without being sung, by the harmonics of singers in a state of grace. This musical and aesthetic summit is a living heritage of a European culture whose origins date back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Gathered around Jérémie Couleau, the musicians of La Quintina bring certain forgotten polyphonies to life without limiting themselves in time or space.
Read more
La Petite Symphonie, Daniel Isoir – Mozart: Piano Quartets (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:14 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Muso
Mozart’s piano quartets, which are rarely performed or recorded – and still less frequently using period instruments -, are a satisfying fusion of the concerto and the quartet, a perfect balance between the fortepiano and the strings, which variously combine or alternate throughout the piece. The roundness of tone of Daniel Isoir’s fortepiano enriches this permanent dialogue, but the pleasure we derive from listening to the disc is also thanks to the extraordinary bond between the musicians of La Petite Symphonie.
Read more
La Petite Bande & Sigiswald Kuijken – Kantaten im Januar (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:08 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Accent
Even after the completion of the highly praised Bach cantata series, which was released between 2004 and 2014, and in which La Petite Bande recorded cantatas for every Sunday of the liturgical year, Sigiswald Kuijken still does not let go of his great passion for Johann Sebastian Bach. He turns once again to the cantatas and presents on his new recording three works that Bach wrote for the end of January and the beginning of February, and that he performed in Leipzig at St Thomas’ Church between 1725 and 1729. Two of these cantatas – BWV 72 “Alles nur nach Gottes Willen” (1726) and BWV 156 “Ich stehe mit einem Fuß im Grabe” (1729) – were composed for the third Sunday after Epiphany, and the other one – BWV 92 “Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn” (1725) – for the Sunday Septuagesima, i.e. for two weeks later. Kuijken remains true to his performing decisions for the cantata series: all instrumental and vocal parts are occupied only by soloists, which results in a very transparent sound and makes the structures and layers of Bach’s sometimes highly complex works always easily audible.
Read more
La Nuova Musica & David Bates – Sacrifices (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:07:12 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
David Bates leads La Nuova Musica in ‘Sacrifices’, a programme of intensely dramatic oratorios from the mid Baroque. Three poignant tales of denail and sacrifice: St Peter’s denial of Christ; Abraham’s [narrowly averted] sacrifice of his son Isaac; and the Old Testament story of Jepthe, the hero commander who, before leading the Israelites into battle against the Ammonites, vows to God that if he is victorious, he will sacrifice the first living thing he meets upon his return. Unfortunately it is his darling daughter, who dances out to greet him with cymbals and flutes. Jepthe must honour his vow… In a dramatic lament, th edaughter [she is never named] asks the mountains to bewail her fate – they answer in echoes; this is followed by one of the most moving choruses in all 17th C music. Belgian soprano Sophie Juncker is the daughter [and one to watch].
La Nuova Musica is established in the UK with regular appearances at the London Handel, the Spitalfields and Aldeburgh International festivals, and has achieved worldwide recognition and outreach through a five-record deal with harmonia mundi USA. Its debut recording for the label, released in March 2012, a world premiere on CD of the 1712 version of Handel’s ‘Il pastor Fido’, was proclaimed as the arrival of “an exceptionally talented young British ensemble” (Opera magazine). A second release, of Handel and Vivaldi ‘Dixit Dominus’, followed in 2013. After its recent debut at Wigmore Hall – performing Francesco Conti’s ‘L’Issipile’ with an all-star cast – The Guardian acclaimed the group as going “from strength to strength”. A disc of Handel, Bononcini and Ariosti arias, with countertenor Lawrence Zazzo, will be released on October 13th.
Read more
La Nuova Musica & David Bates – Handel’s Unsung Heroes (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:14 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
Instrumentalists put centre stage : after their acclaimed recording of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, La Nuova Musica and David Bates propose this project, “Handel’s Unsung Heroes”, in which the instrumentalists of Handel’s operas are put centre stage. Traditionally restricted to an “invisible” existence in the orchestra pit, La Nuova Musica’s obbligato instrumentalists – violinist Thomas Gould, oboist Leo Duarte and bassoonist Joe Qiu – are now in the limelight. They will stand as equal partners alongside a world-class line up of soloists – soprano Lucy Crowe, mezzo-soprano Christine Rice and countertenor Iestyn Davies – showing how Handel wrote music as virtuosic and lyrical for his unsung heroes as for their singing counterparts. The album includes arias from Handel’s masterpieces such as Rinaldo, Giulio Cesare, Agrippina and Ariodante.
Read more
La Morra – The Lion’s Ear (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:05:33 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée
In 1512, Giovanni di Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici (1475-1521) was the eldest surviving male member of the senior line of the celebrated Medici family of Florence, the eldest surviving son of the mythic Lorenzo “il Magnifico.” Giovanni had inherited his family’s refined interest in and zealous support of the arts: literature; painting, sculpture, and architecture; and music. But of all of these, Giovanni – perhaps due in part to his poor eyesight – favored music, for which his passion was legendary among contemporaries. The musical life of Leo’s court was unimaginably rich and vibrant, as innumerable eyewitness accounts confirm.
Our CD aims to bring that world acoustically to life, to revive the soundscape of the Leonine court and illustrate the range of practices typifying Leo’s own musical experiences. It is intended as a tribute to a rare and extraordinary patron of music (himself a composer and musician), who occupied that singular position at the very summit of the universal ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Read more
La Morra – Splendor da ciel (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:39 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée
Here’s something fascinating: music from the 14th and early 15th centuries, lost for hundreds of years, has now been rediscovered thanks to some space-age technology. Because, in fact, the original manuscripts were never lost. In reality, the paper had been scrubbed and recycled or covered over with palimpsests because of the prohibitive price of parchment at the time. And so a whole body of Florentine works from the era of Petrarch, Boccacio, Dante and Machiavelli was erased to make room for 16th century poems. A careful examination of the San Lorenzo Palimpsest revealed that multi-spectral photography (anyone who knows what that is, raise your hand…) of the pages can render the underlying layer perfectly legible, and so now 111 pages of music from the 14th century can see the light of day. After six hundred years of multi-spectral silence, these pieces are interpreted here by the La Morra ensemble, which specialises in late medieval and Renaissance music with voice and instruments like the lute, vielle, clavicymbalum and recorder. There is an intensity of emotion in hearing these pieces which until now we never knew existed, written by composers of whom we know almost nothing such as Giovanni Mazzuoli and his son Piero, Paolo da Firenze or Jacopo da Bologna. Here they take centre stage.
Read more
La Morra – Dulcedo (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:00:48 minutes | 2,44 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © OMF
Medieval Europeans often used various forms of the word ‘sweetness’ (Lat. dulcedo) to describe the beauty of a musical sound. ‘Sweet’ could apply to the sound of the human voice, but also to that of a musical instrument. When the ancestor of the ‘pianoforte’ was invented in the fifteenth century – some 250 years before Cristofori! –, it was baptized ‘sweet melody’ (Lat. dulce melos). Indeed, if there was a sound that medieval people were particularly fond of, it was that of plucked stringed instruments.
Read more