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Les Ombres, Margaux Blanchard, Sylvain Sartre – Telemann: Quatuors Parisiens (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 55:48 minutes | 1010 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare
After two albums released by Ambronay which have received numerous plaudits, the Swiss baroque ensemble Les Ombres present an album dedicated to Telemann’s ‘Paris’ Quartets: repertoire they played at York Early Music Festival in 2012 in a young artists’ showcase.
Pleased with the reception of his quartets from the Parisian public, Telemann completed an edition of six new quartets subsequently appointed ‘Pariser Quartett’. These contrast with the first set in their decidedly French style. In chamber formation Les Ombres explore the unique style of these jewels of baroque music.
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Les Ombres – Boccherini: Une nuit à Madrid (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:11 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare
The musicians of Les Ombres pay tribute to Luigi Boccherini. The free and audacious composer was an insatiable traveler and the inventor of the string quartet whose belatedly acknowledged genius has now earned him a major place in the history of music.
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Les Nouveaux Caractères, Sébastien d’Hérin – The Salon of Scylla and Glaucus (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:00 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fuga Libera
The Salon of Scylla and Glaucus is a moment of chamber music, music behind closed doors, closed but paradoxically opened, where one can enter in resonance and lose his way between what is similar and yet different.
Here is the opportunity to pay to a generation of brilliant composers around Jean-Marie Leclair a colorful tribute made of a mosaic of movements, hesitations and passionate portraits, like a musical snapshot of an intimate and instrumental world in contrast to the Parisian opera and theater of the Royal Academy under Louis XV the Beloved.
This is also the opportunity to get together with noble instrumentalists and friends to let them or not take the floor at their convenience and desire… Viola da gamba, violins and cello are joining the harpsichord to make out of a simple keyboard piece an elegant and improvised concert, out of an overture a twirling trio. And these Characters, in turn virtuosos or abandoned but also witnesses of mixtures and fragments of an inspired era, remind us that “the most delicate pleasure is to make that of others.”
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Les Musiciens du Louvre – Offenbach: La Périchole (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:42:47 minutes | 1,75 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Bru Zane
Offenbach’s La Périchole (1868) will never cease to delights music lovers of all persuasions. Marc Minkowski – long one of the composer’s prophets – was keen to pay tribute to him with this world premiere recording on period instruments, in the company of the young school of French singers, including the bewitching Aude Extrémo, the dashing Stanislas de Barbeyrac and the hilarious Alexandre Duhamel. Combining fashionable rhythms with the most unexpected touches of folklore, the score is a veritable flood of hit numbers. How can one not be swept away by the insolence of the Seguidilla, the frenzy of the Bolero or the furious rhythm of the Prison Trio? Never before, perhaps, had Offenbach gone so far in caricaturing political leaders – nor used drunkenness to resolve the imbroglio of inextricable sentimental relationships. And indeed, the ‘Tipsy Arietta’ is one of the composer’s best-known numbers. Cheers!
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François Lazarevitch, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien – The Queen’s Delight (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:18 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
This programme reflects the full flavour and richness of English music and the instrumental and vocal repertory it inspired in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The rhythmic impulse of this repertory sometimes making use of ostinato culminates in the grounds, jigs, contredanses and so on that were all the rage at the time and led to the publication of John Playford’s collection The English Dancing Master in 1651. Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, showing their familiarity with early sources from England, Scotland and Ireland, also emphasise the melodic aspect of these dances, which in the course of time became sung airs the soprano Fiona McGown and the baritone Enea Sorini complete a colourful instrumentarium. Finally, the light-hearted dimension of entertainment is present everywhere in this repertory, which was popular in the sense that it was universally practised at the time, achieving a fame that spread far beyond the British Isles.
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Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien & François Lazarevitch – Vivaldi: Le quattro stagioni, La tempesta di mare, Il gardellino & La notte (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:32 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
After Scottish and Irish music, airs de cour and Baroque suites and sonatas, François Lazarevitch explores Vivaldi’s music and his cargo of rare instruments. The musette de cour (a more sophisticated form of bagpipe) is used to perform Spring from The Four Seasons, in an astonishing and very convincing version transcribed by the great virtuoso wind player of the reign of Louis XV, Nicolas Chédeville. Lazarevitch himself has arranged the other Seasons for the transverse flute, following a frequent eighteenth-century practice. A new angle on these evergreen masterpieces. The rest of the programme is devoted to other favourite pieces by Vivaldi, this time originally written for flute.
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François Lazarevitch, Jean Rondeau, Lucile Boulanger, Thomas Dunford & Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien – Bach: Sonates & solo pour la flûte traversière (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:11:54 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
As director of Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, François Lazarevitch has enabled us to discover numerous treasures stemming from dance and folk music. For the first time on Alpha, he has recorded a solo album, devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Flute Sonatas. His approach to these works benefits from his experience as the conductor of an ensemble, enriched by the particularly varied musical experiments he has carried out.
So this disc offers us an especially interesting and singular interpretation of these treasures by Bach with a rhythmic approach not lacking in swing, and backed up, it is true, by a basso continuo featuring first-rank instrumentalists.
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Les Muffatti, Bart Jacobs – Bach: Concertos for Organ and Strings (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:19:55 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée
Although we know of at least five concertos J.S. Bach wrote for solo organ we have no surviving Bach organ concertos with orchestral accompaniment. Contrast this with the 200+ cantatas: of these, 18 feature organ obbligato, which Bach uses as a solo instrument in arias, choral sections and sinfonias. The most obviously conspicuous date to 1726. In May to November of that year, Bach composed six cantatas which assign a prominent solo role to the organ. Most of these are reworkings of movements of lost violin and oboe concertos written in Bach’s time at Weimar and Köthen. Why Bach wrote such a number of obbligato organ cantatas in such a short period remains unknown. One possible explanation may lie in Dresden, where Bach had given a concert on the new Silbermann organ in the Sophienkirche in 1725. Some scholars think that, in addition to other organ works, he also performed organ concertos, or at least a few earlier versions of the sinfonias, with obbligato organ and strings in order to show off the organ. From the cantatas mentioned above, along with the related violin and harpsichord concertos, it is perfectly possible to reconstruct a number of three-movement organ concertos of this type. By using this method, we hope to bring some of the music which Bach may have performed in Dresden in 1725 back to life.
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Les Arts Florissants & William Christie – In an Italian Garden: Aria, Cantatas & Madrigals (Live) (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:36 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
The six young singers of the Academy of Le Jardin des Voix, selected from several hundred candidates, offer us a musical journey through some of the finest pieces in the Italian repertory, from a Banchieri madrigal to Haydn’s Orlando paladino. Thanks to an outstanding training programme and the musical values transmitted by William Christie and Paul Agnew, here is a chance to discover both some splendid vocal gems and a group of new performers who honour them with talent, grace and humour. Sheer delight!
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Les Enfoirés – 2019 Le monde des Enfoirés (Live) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:51:32 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Chanson
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia
Comme chaque année depuis 1989, la tournée des Enfoirés en faveur des Restos du cœur fait la part belle à des reprises de tubes français signés entre autres Téléphone, Michel Sardou ou Jean-Jacques Goldman (qui est aussi l’auteur-compositeur de l’hymne originel des Enfoirés). Pour une fois, ce dernier n’est pas présent physiquement lors de ce concert exceptionnel, mais les voix de Lorie, Pascal Obispo, Jenifer, Zazie, Bénabar, Thomas Dutronc, Patrick Bruel, Amir et Florent Pagny feront oublier cette petite déception. On compte en tout près de 30 artistes sur la scène de cette salle bordelaise (Arkéa Arena). Outre les vétérans du songwriting cités plus haut, on pourra entendre des chansons plus actuelles, comme Dommage des rappeurs Bigflo et Oli, La Même de Maître Gims et Vianney, Si t’étais là de Louane, ainsi qu’un pot-pourri intitulé Mafioso Club, qui comprend notamment des morceaux signés Lartiste ou bien Therapie Taxi (parmi des classiques comme La Bamba ou Bella Ciao). Mais la grande surprise de ce concert, c’est la présence du trio mythique Les Inconnus, qui se reforment exceptionnellement pour interpréter un medley de leurs grandes parodies musicales des années 1980 et 1990 (Isabelle a les yeux bleus, Auteuil, Neuilly, Passy, Rap-tout…). C’est la première fois depuis le film Les Trois Frères, le retour en 2014 que le trio se retrouve. Au milieu des slows et des rocks qui constituent traditionnellement le répertoire des Enfoirés, cet intermède souriant et nostalgique est finalement une manière de revenir aux fondamentaux de ce projet caritatif créé par l’un des comiques français les plus populaires de la fin du XXe siècle. – Nicolas Magenham
Read moreLes Cris de Paris & Geoffroy Jourdain – Melancholia (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]
Les Cris de Paris & Geoffroy Jourdain – Melancholia (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:09 minutes | 649 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
A most unusual cabinet of curiosities ‘Finding pleasure even in meditating on what causes one’s pain’: that neatly defines the theme of this album of music from the cusp of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here Italian and English madrigals rub shoulders with motets and Tenebrae responsories. A melancholic poetry that provided endless nourishment for musical creativity in the late Renaissance, and which Geoffroy Jourdain presents in his first recording for harmonia mundi.
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Les Metaboles & Léo Warynski – The Angels (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 45:56 minutes | 472 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © NoMadMusic
Avocal ensemble always brings a portion of mystery to a concert. One knows the layout of an orchestra: the instruments all have their place – who will be in front, who in back – but the distribution of voices seems subject to a changeable and secret logic.
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Les Lunaisiens – Le singe et l’épouvantail (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:55 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © MUSO
One cold winter’s evening a monkey is refused hospitality at the castle. Preparing to sleep outdoors he meets a scarecrow. The latter proves to be a wise counsellor who is a master of the art of the fable… Beware! For let us not forget that often it is the biter who is bitten! Pierre Senges pays a brilliant homage to Jean de La Fontaine, the 400th anniversary of whose birth will be celebrated in 2021. Arnaud Marzorati shows himself to be an exceptional storyteller for this new fable, poetically set to music by les Lunaisiens.
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Les Kapsber’girls – Vous avez dit Brunettes ? (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:05 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Les Kapsber’girls, an ensemble of four singers and instrumentalists directed by the lutenist Albane Imbs, has already released its debut album (Che fai tù?, released on Muso) which received several awards. The group now joins Alpha for several recordings, starting with Vous avez dit Brunettes? – ‘brunettes’ being the name of the chansons that lovers crooned in each others’ ears by the Bassin d’Apollon or among the groves of the Petit Trianon at Versailles Palace, undeniably light in character yet powerfully authentic. Seventeenth-century France was home to a host of artists whose talent served the nobility and the bourgeoisie, who were extremely partial to these airs. Performing them as vocal solos or duets with lute or viol, Les Kapsber’girls bring back to life, more than three centuries later, these works published by Ballard & Fils, printers to the Sun King, alongside such little-known composers as Julie Pinel and Giuseppe Saggione.
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Les inAttendus – Poetical Humors (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:02:25 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Unexpected? The pairing of viola da gamba and accordion is certainly that! But perhaps even more surprising is how well the singing strings of the veteran instrument harmonize with the subtly vibrating reeds of the centuries-younger newcomer. Also unexpected is this cross-generational meeting of two musicians (what are the odds?), who found each other exploring the ‘poetical humours’ of early seventeenth-century England. Recently reunited in the recording studio after several seasons of rapturously received recitals, with this well-timed album the duo Les inAttendus makes its first entry into the harmonia mundi catalogue.
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