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

J.S. Bach in Weimar

Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants continue their chronological survey of Bach’s life in music. As he borrowed from the French style and reshaped the Italian model of the concerto, the years of his residence in Weimar (1708-1717) left a lasting mark on the church-cantata genre and blazed a new trail for it.

Volume 2 in this series again invites us to compare Bach’s approach with that of his contemporaries, particularly when they set the very same text written by Luther — as in Telemann’s stunningly dramatic cantata “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland.”

Discover more about this album and about “A Life in Music” by Paul Agnew & Les Arts Florissants.

Visionary Satie

Alain Planès, whose admiration for Erik Satie is no secret, pays the composer a vibrant tribute to mark the centenary of his death. Complemented by a largely unpublished selection of paintings and drawings in the accompanying booklet, this is a remarkable album!

Performing on a 1928 Pleyel grand piano, Alain Planès delivers a panoramic survey of this often witty, caustic yet visionary music that resists classification. He is partnered by Marc Mauillon in the songs and François Pinel in the four-hand pieces for this exploration of the finest compositions penned by the “Master of Arcueil.”

Schubert, from darkness to light.

For this second volume in their chronological traversal of Schubert lieder, Samuel Hasselhorn and Ammiel Bushakevitz explore the masterpieces dating from the years 1824 and 1825.

Schubert 200, episode 2: following a period of self-doubt and despondency at the diagnosis of a disease he knew to be incurable, Schubert regained hope thanks to the support of his friend, the baritone Johann Michael Vogl.

(The series continues…)

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!

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.

“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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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