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NEW RELEASE 21 FEBRUARY 2025

A love letter to the viola

In his fourth project with harmonia mundi, Timothy Ridout presents a programme of unaccompanied works for the viola that ranges from Telemann to Benjamin Britten and Caroline Shaw—a veritable love letter to his instrument, prized for its warm and soulful timbre.

Combing through several centuries of viola repertoire, the young British virtuoso contrasts the music of the Baroque (Bach, Telemann) with that of our time (including Britten’s rarely heard Elegy and Caroline Shaw’s in manus tuas). A ravishing performance full of youthful freshness!

New release: 14 February 2025

Stravinsky, master of pastiche

After exploring the music of Olivier Messiaen, Gustavo Gimeno enters the singular universe of another twentieth-century titan: Igor Stravinsky. The composer had a special artistic affinity with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the musicians amply repay the debt in this new recording!

The two ballet scores heard here reveal a particular facet of Stravinsky’s genius: his skill in pastiche. Having drawn from the music of eighteenth-century Naples for ‘Pulcinella,’ he turned to Tchaikovsky for ‘The Fairy’s Kiss.’ On both occasions, he succeeded in transforming the exercise of homage into a distinctly personal work.

New release: 7 February 2025

“Something rich and strange…”

Geoffroy Jourdain and Les Cris de Paris explore some of the most astonishing examples of late-Renaissance polyphony and find a fascinating echo in a contemporary work by Francesca Verunelli. A journey into the land of “strange harmonies”!

To shed more light on this puzzle in 16th-century music at the periphery of the now standard norms of harmony and tuning, they also present the world premiere recording of VicentinoOo, in which a modern-day Italian composer pays tribute to the microtonal pieces of Nicola Vicentino by employing his 31-note scale!

New release: 31 January 2025

A cornucopia of night music!

To launch their exclusive partnership with harmonia mundi, Enrico Onofri and the Münchener Kammerorchester invite us to explore, in the company of Isabelle Faust, the poetic and colourful universe of Mozart’s serenades.

Continuing a time-honoured tradition of open-air music, Mozart raised this genre to an outstanding level of accomplishment. From his celebrated gem A Little Night Music to the Posthorn Serenade, alongside the majestic Haffner Serenade with Isabelle Faust as the stellar guest, here is our chance to experience a whole musical world brought vividly to life.

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NEW RELEASE: 24 JANUARY 2025

A Nordic getaway

Following their two earlier recordings devoted to Ireland and Scotland, Alix Boivert and The Curious Bards have crossed the North Sea to investigate the music of eighteenth-century Sweden and Norway.

Exploring traditional as well as classical repertoires, along with folk and courtly music, The Curious Bards invite us to discover the colourful and varied world of Scandinavian songs and dances.

NEW RELEASE: 17 JANUARY 2025

Dream Théotime!

A year after the release of their magnificent first album of Vivaldi’s music – “Concerti per una vita,”Théotime Langlois de Swarte and the orchestra of Le Consort turn to that composer’s most famous masterpiece: “The Four Seasons.”

To place this beloved cycle in context, they hold up a subtle mirror to other works by the Venetian composer that share the same musical gestures and tonalities, alongside Lambranzi’s rarely heard dances: an obvious if often overlooked source of inspiration for Vivaldi.

NEW RELEASE: 10 JANUARY 2025

Palestrina, 500 years on!

This year marks the quincentenary of the birth of Palestrina, one of the greatest musical minds of his time. Graham Ross and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, pay tribute to the Roman master of sacred choral music with a superb new album of his rarely heard or previously unrecorded works.

To add historical context, they offer further versions of the same texts as set by William Byrd, Robert White, and William Mundy. Musical discoveries galore!

NEW RELEASE: 6 DECEMBER 2024

Celebrating the French trumpet!

Romain Leleu and his musical partner Julien Gernay invite us on a whirlwind tour of the birthplace of the French trumpet and cornet.

Captivated by the unique sonorities of the historical instruments preserved at Paris’s Museum of Music, they have devised a fascinating programme that pays homage to the golden age of the French trumpet. Joined by other fellow musicians (Benoît de Barsony, Guillaume Cottet-Dumoulin, and Adrien Jaminet), they offer a traversal of the repertoire that is as flamboyant as it is poetic!

NOVEMBER 2024

William Christie & Co

Happy birthday, Bill!

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the founder of the ensemble Les Arts Florissants William Christie is not content merely to honour the composers who are close to his heart. Along with his tireless endeavours as a musical archeologist, here he also demonstrates his role of mentor to the younger generation of talented performers.

While showcasing the composers he has so fervently championed and, in some cases, brought back into the limelight, this programme also displays the loyalty to his musical companions that has characterised his entire career

NOVEMBER 2024

Quintessential piano concertos

Kristian Bezuidenhout continues his exploration of Mozart’s piano concertos with the Freiburger Barockorchester. Here they deliver a superb reading of the Concertos nos. 19 and 23, which are justifiably among the most famous in the corpus.

The undeniable popularity of these two works is largely due to their sublime middle movements, but also because they reach the very heights of Mozartian subtlety in terms of orchestration, thematic development, and dramatic instinct. The historically informed performances presented here take the same interpretative approach as earlier volumes in the cycle, underpinned by an utterly luminous musical discourse!

NOVEMBER 2024

Holy fury!

Now recording exclusively for harmonia mundi, Carlo Vistoli lends his artistry to a showcase of one of the greatest Baroque masters as his label debut: the music of Antonio Vivaldi.

“Diamond” rating from OPÉRA MAGAZINE

Joining the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Italian countertenor invites us on a journey into some of Vivaldi’s finest sacred works. Paired with the celebrated Nisi Dominus and Stabat Mater, the quasi-operatic motet In furore shows the extravert, theatrical side of this music, intended for edification, to be sure, but also for our greater delight.

NOVEMBER 2024

Shostakovich at his most personal

The Cuarteto Casals embarks on its recording project devoted to the complete string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich: one of the most fascinating chamber-music cycles of the twentieth century.

 After being subjected to public attacks by the Soviet regime in the mid-1930s, Shostakovich sought new avenues of self-expression by turning to chamber music, and the string quartet became for him the perfect medium for private confession. To launch their complete Shostakovich cycle, members of the Cuarteto Casals offer deeply insightful readings of the first five quartets—works that are pivotal in the composer’s oeuvre.

DIAPASON D’OR

OCTOBER 2024

The experts compete!

The musical legacy of the Bach family is inseparably linked to the progress in instrument making of the time, which was dominated by the Silbermann family. Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas and his ensemble Les Surprises offer a fascinating comparison between the two dynasties—composers vs. organ builders and fortepiano makers.

Featuring the famous Silbermann organ at the Cathedral of St. Mary in Freiberg, Saxony, along with other superb originals and copies of Silbermann instruments, this recording takes us on a journey through the works of the Leipzig Cantor and of two of his celebrated sons: Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel.

BEST-SELLER 2024

Requiem!

Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble Pygmalion deliver an overwhelmingly moving reading of Mozart’s testamentary work. A masterly interpretation!

Nurtured by a seminal stage experience (in collaboration with director Romeo Castellucci), this recording offers a series of mirror effects that challenge our preconceptions of such a well-known work. Punctuated by earlier sacred pieces by the composer, it invites a dialogue between rearangements, his homage to tradition, and rarely heard pieces from Mozart’s catalogue.

 

ALSO ON LP

Latest New Releases

A bumper crop of awards.

Nearly 100 distinctions garnered by harmonia mundi artists this year!

In 2024, our tally of awards has been nothing short of exceptional. In addition to the 3 Diapasons d’or of the year, 2 Chocs of the year from Classica, 2 Gramophone awards and no fewer than 4 entries into the Top 100 of Apple Music, a multitude of trophies awarded throughout the year served to highlight the diversity and artistic rigour of the talented musicians, ensembles and the label itself. Here is a chance to look back at the many releases that proved popular with the listening public, ranging from recordings by Isabelle Faust to Théotime Langlois de Swarte, from Jean-Guihen Queyras to Adam Laloum, from Pablo Heras-Casado to the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, from Pygmalion under Raphaël Pichon to the Ensemble Correspondances led by Sébastien Daucé, all of which you will find here, basking in the spotlight of the enthusiastic press. The new artist signings were greeted with equal enthusiasm, be it Aline Piboule or the Hanson Quartet!

The perfect occasion to take a look back on the finest moments of the year, before moving on to 2025, that promises to be just as plentiful and diverse…

Upcoming albums, projects, life of the label…

Timothy Ridout graces the cover of Gramophone magazine

The “superb young virtuoso” of the viola is a genuine phenomenon. On February 4, he could be heard at the Salle Cortot, offering a preview of his latest release titled “Solo.”

Recording an entire solo album before reaching the age of 30: this says a lot about the dazzling career of a viola prodigy capable of deftly pushing the envelope, as does his choice of juxtaposing unaccompanied works by two Baroque giants (Telemann and J.S. Bach) with music of our time (Benjamin Britten and Caroline Shaw). Breathtaking!

“SOLO” / AVAILABLE 21 FEBRUARY 2025

Erik Satie with a difference.

To mark this year’s centenary of the death of the composer known as the ‘maître of Arcueil,’ we are aided by an expert performer of his ‘Flaccid Preludes (For a dog)’!

Alain Planès offers a sparkling recital of Satie’s piano music, with baritone Marc Mauillon as his stellar guest. The recording (made on a splendid Pleyel grand piano from 1928) is illustrated with drawings by the composer and paintings by the pianist… and is our chance to discover their artistic bond via Jacques Février, a great interpreter of Satie who also taught Alain Planès.

“SATIE/PLANÈS” AVAILABLE 7 MARCH 2025

Welcome aboard, Maestro!

This year marks the launch of our new partnership with a top-ranked German orchestra: the NDR Radiophilharmonie under the direction of its chief conductor Stanislav Kochanovsky.

For harmonia mundi, the Saint Petersburg native has chosen to explore a repertoire he knows inside out: the music of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia. Here is a chance to hear an expert interpretation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s celebrated ‘Capriccio espagnol’ alongside works by Tchaikovsky (Orchestral Suite No.3) and Tcherepnin (Prelude to ‘La Princesse lointaine’).

AVAILABLE 21 MARCH 2025

To be released in 2025!

New harmonia mundi albums for the first half of the year

The first six months of 2025 will be filled with of all kinds of “firsts”: a year after the wide acclaim garnered by his “Concerti per una vita” album, Théotime Langlois de Swarte takes on the challenges of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, approaching it with infinite nuance (January). At the other end of the spectrum, we celebrate the season with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in the company of two topflight pianists: Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy (June). Along the way, Sébastien Daucé will explore Europe’s High North with a programme of seventeenth-century Swedish music (April), while the Curious Bards traverse eighteenth-century Scandinavia in song and dance (January). Not forgetting an eagerly awaited performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor led by Raphaël Pichon! We will also showcase the music of ERIK SATIE with Alain Planès, not to mention that of MAURICE RAVEL and GEORGE BIZET. Joining harmonia mundi to record exclusively for our label are the Münchener Kammerorchester under the direction of Enrico Onofri, conductor Stanislav Kochanovsky at the head of the NDR Radiophilharmonie (Hanover), and the superb French countertenor Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian.

Discover all the details here!

Stradivari collection offers a miraculous return to life…

When incomparable instruments that are centuries old leave their storage and come alive under the fingers of today’s finest performers!

Over the past few years, harmonia mundi has established a close partnership with the Museum of Music housed at the Paris Philharmonie. Under the umbrella of the Stradivari collection, outstanding performers are invited to discover and play on the museum’s priceless instruments, lovingly restored and maintained by a team of curators and conservators. Each release in the series is conceived as an encounter between the instrument and the performer, featuring the repertoire perfectly suited to both. This partnership has already borne exceptional fruit, as you may sample for yourself here or by visiting the Paris Philharmonie’s website.

NEXT RELEASE AVAILABLE AUGUST 2024:
Gabriel Fauré, Nocturnes and Barcarolles  
J.S. BACH | B. ALARD

Dolby Atmos sound

is present on many new releases and re-releases by harmonia mundi..

No less than 18 new releases are announced in Dolby Atmos format on the label in 2024. Find the complete list of releases in this format in our Topics.

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A passion for excellence 1958.

Now 65, the label cultivates an insolent youth. Exploring new repertoires, broadening our horizons, developing young talent and constantly striving for excellence: this is harmonia mundi’s motto. We are demanding, passionate and proud of our independence. This is our story…

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