Sabine Devieilhe / Alexandre Tharaud CHANSON D'AMOUR

CHANSON D'AMOUR

Alexandre Tharaud BEETHOVEN Sonatas Opus 109, 110, 111

                                                      SONATAS OPUS 109, 110, 111

Alexandre Tharaud VERSAILLES

                                                                   VERSAILLES

Alexandre Tharaud GÉRARD PESSON - HANS ABRAHAMSEN - OSCAR STRASNOY

                        GÉRARD PESSON - HANS ABRAHAMSEN - OSCAR STRASNOY

Jean-Guihen Queyras / Alexandre Tharaud COMPLICES

                                                                       COMPLICES

Alexandre Tharaud BARBARA

It is 20 years since Barbara died, aged 67, on November 24th 1997. Alexandre Tharaud’s idea for this album dates back to the day of her funeral. He, like many other fans, went to the cemetery in Bagneux on the outskirts of Paris. After the crowds and TV cameras had departed, a group of devotees remained at her grave and joined in an impromptu rendition of her songs. “I realised then that Barbara would live on through our voices,” says Tharaud. “I was young, but the recording studio was already central to my life. That morning, at Bagneux Cemetery, I vowed to make an album dedicated entirely to the music of Barbara. I needed time, and singers … The guests on this album are not those anonymous mourners, but dear friends I have invited to lend their own unique voices to this tribute.” 

For Barbara, Tharaud has assembled a rich and imaginative line-up of performers from a variety of generations and diverse artistic and cultural backgrounds. While there is inevitably a Gallic bias among them, many of their names are well known around the globe. Among them are: actress-singers Juliette Binoche, Vanessa Paradis and Jane Birkin; rock star Radio Elvis; singer-songwriters Bénabar, Juliette, Dominique A, Tim Dup, Jean-Louis Aubert and Albin de la Simone; singers Camélia Jordana, Rokia Traoré, Hindi Zahra and Luz Casal; actor-director Guillaume Gallienne; Erato violinist Renaud Capuçon, clarinettist Michel Portal and the Modigliani string quartet. Alexandre Tharaud himself plays on nearly all the tracks – not just piano, but also electronic organ and keyboards, celesta and bells. 

"Like Jacques Brel, the artist known simply as Barbara was a connoisseur of melancholy. Yet this celebration marking the 20th anniversary of her death is anything but dirge-like. The classical pianist Alexandre Tharaud assembles a superb cast, from Vanessa Paradis to Rokia Traoré and Juliette Binoche, while the chamber settings - including a disc of instrumentals - are rich in subtle autumnal shades. A triumph." (The Sunday Times)

Jean-Guihen Queyras / Alexandre Tharaud BRAHMS Cello Sonatas - Hungarian Dances

Pianist Alexandre Tharaud and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras are long-established as a duo team, but this is the first time that Queyras has joined Tharaud for an Erato recording. They have chosen works that lie at the heart of the Romantic repertoire, all by Brahms: his two cello sonatas and the duo’s own transcriptions of six of the Hungarian Dances.

Sabine Devieilhe MIRAGES

This album came about through my desire to record Lakmé, a role that has been very dear to my heart since I first performed it on stage in 2012. It’s a part of which I know and love every single bar. 

For the character of Lakmé, Léo Delibes composed some of the most beautiful music ever written for coloratura soprano. His artistic approach was essentially a French one in that he always made the voice the centre of attention, with an orchestration that is at times diaphanous (when the heroine recites a prayer) and at times dazzling (in the great love duets). It was this work that sparked my love for French nineteenth-century opera. But Lakmé also came about within the context of European artists becoming more open to influences from distant lands. Western ears were at that time keen to be taken on musical and poetic journeys, and people were increasingly receptive to perfumes from afar.

This collection explores the dream of the East cultivated by Delibes and later by Maurice Delage, who actually went on an extended visit to India and brought back with him the modal colours of Indian music. It also touches on Japan and China, as seen through the prism of Messager’s Madame Chrysanthème and Stravinsky’s Rossignol, and Egypt, with the incantation sung by La Charmeuse in Thaïs. The element of fantasy also takes on a more folk-like and popular dimension, with settings by Ambroise Thomas and Berlioz of Ophelia’s strange song. With his music for Mélisande and Ariel, both of whom use their voices to sing and to charm, Debussy uses the exoticism of the modal scale to disconcert the listener and evoke an unspecified faraway place. 

So, ‘far from the real world’, as Lakmé says before her ‘Liebestod’, like the fantasy image of a distant country – let us indulge an innocent pleasure, and dream... (Sabine Devieilhe, 2017)

Tharaud plays RACHMANINOV

French pianist Alexandre Tharaud takes on the blockbuster 'Rach 2' concerto in a thrilling performance with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Russian maestro Alexander Vedernikov. It is coupled with more intimate Rachmaninov for piano six-hands (for which Alexandre is flanked by Alexander Melnikov and Aleksandar Madžar) and the icing on the cake: a sublime Vocalise in the original version for voice and piano, with pure-voiced French soprano Sabine Devieilhe. 

Alexandre Tharaud's recorded catalogue is large and eclectic, but this is the first time he has devoted an entire album to Russian repertoire – specifically to the music of Sergei Rachmaninov. 'I was still quite young when I first played this concerto' explains Tharaud. 'I adored it... Rachmaninov's virtuosity really appeals to young pianists. Today, of course I'm still enthralled by the concerto's virtuosity, but now I'm more interested in its dark shadows: the sense of despair, of staring into the abyss. My interpretation of Rachmaninov has changed a lot over the years.' (Warner Classics)

Alexandre Tharaud MOZART - HAYDN Jeunehomme

French pianist Alexandre Tharaud is known for programs that hold together only marginally, and so it is here: Mozart's French piano student who went by the name of Mademoiselle Jeunehomme (or Jenamy or Jénomé) is associated with only one of these works, and possibly not even with that one: she is said to have given the premiere of the sprawling Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K. 271, but the work has all the hallmarks of music Mozart wrote for himself. What you have here is a rather random collection of classical piano-and-orchestra music, with a neglected aria thrown in for good measure. This said, Tharaud stands out from the crowd of other pianists who have played this concerto. It's not so much the rest of the program: the rather plain Piano Concerto in D major, Hob. 18/11, of Haydn, or the two smaller obscure Mozart works. It's that the E flat concerto is really different. He performs with a well-established historical-instruments group, Les Violons du Roy under Bernard Labadie, but his approach on the piano is reminiscent of the old days with the major symphony orchestras: his sound is big, his phrasing expansive, his use of the pedal liberal. What makes this news is that he manages both to hold the music together and to make it fresh; Mozart recordings of this kind have a strong family resemblance, but Tharaud, as so often, is both spontaneous and logical. A novel and successful Mozart release, with strong sound from Quebec's Domaine Forget concert hall. (James Manheim)