Camille Thomas VOICE OF HOPE (extended)

 

VOICE OF HOPE

Anneleen Lenaerts NINO ROTA Works for Harp

 

WORKS FOR HARP

 

Camille Thomas VOICE OF HOPE

VOICE OF HOPE

Anneleen Lenaerts NINO ROTA Works for Harp

On March 29, Anneleen Lenaerts released her sixth album, highlighting the works of Nino Rota and featuring Emmanuel Pahud on flute and Adrien Perruchon conducting the Brussels Philharmonic. In addition to Rota’s harp concerto, the Sarabanda e Toccata, and his flute and harp sonata, Lenaerts performs music from his films such as The Godfather and Taming of the Shrew. “Nino Rota is such a special composer, mainly known to the audience for his film music for movies like The Godfather, Dolce Vita, and Romeo and Juliet,” Lenaerts says. “But before he got famous doing this, he had written so many beautiful classical pieces that are not as well–known as they should be. People usually don’t know that he wrote many concerti, operas, ballets, even an oratorio and chamber music.” When asked what she enjoys most about his music, she references his classical works, saying, “It’s as if he always takes you on a trip full of images and true emotions. Even without a movie you can picture a story to it.”

Stéphane Denève / Brussels Philharmonic GUILLAUME CONNESSON Lost Horizon

After Lucifer (2014) and Pour sortir au jour (2016), the French composer Guillaume Connesson returns to Deutsche Grammophon with "Lost Horizon", a new double-album directed by Stéphane Denève at the head of the Brussels Philharmonic. Already awarded the Victoire de la Musique Classique in the Composer category in 2015, Guillaume Connesson received last February his second award as Composer of the Year 2019 for "Les Horizons perdus", Concerto for Violin created in September 2018 that we find within this double album. These two CDs show two facets of the composer's art and offer two trips. One outside, with the fantastic and festive "Cities of Lovecraft" and the saxophone Concerto A Kind of Trane performed by Timothy McAllister. A work that recalls the memory of the jazzman John Coltrane, real incarnation of the solo instrument as he imagines it. The other is a journey inside oneself illustrated by the Violin Concerto Les Horizons Perdus. Performed by Renaud Capuçon, this score refers to James Hilton's novel "Lost Horizon" (1933), adapted for film by Frank Capra. "The Tomb of Regrets" is a slow movement in which Guillaume Connesson was tempted by a very linear, almost choral writing to explore intimate feelings, those of time passing, buried regrets and impossible returns . Created in a short period between 2015 (A Kind of Trane) and 2018 (Les Horizons Perdus), these four scores show the many facets of a composer who draws his inspiration from the sources of scholarly art as much as popular, without borders or taboos.

Stéphane Denève / Brussels Philharmonic PROKOFIEV Romantic Suites

On 17 November, the latest CD by the Brussels Philharmonic and music director Stéphane Denève will appear on Deutsche Grammophon. Brussels Philharmonic is the first symphony orchestra in Belgium to work with this record label. For its second recording with the more than 100-year-old Deutsche Grammophon, the orchestra opted for the ballet music of Sergei Prokofiev. Denève’s touch is clearly noticeable: he created a new musical dramaturgy, choosing from the existing suites, giving rise to new and exciting combinations.

Stéphane Denève, music director Brussels Philharmonic:
"I have always felt very close to Prokofiev's music, it is therefore an immense joy for me to be able to propose, thanks to the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label, my own suites of two of his most marvellous ballets: Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella. The Brussels Philharmonic and myself want to offer a narrative journey, a romantic vision of those pieces, speaking to the senses and imagination. I hope that this recording will inspire reverie and evoke exalted emotions, in one word: infinite romanticism!”

In 2016, the Philharmonic recorded 'Connesson: Pour sortir au jour' for Deutsche Grammophon. That recording won a Diapason d’or of the year, a CHOC de Classica of the year and a Caecilia prize.

Mathieu Dufour / Stéphane Denève / Brussels Philharmonic GUILLAUME CONNESSON Pour Sortir au Jour

Born in 1970, Guillaume Connesson is too young to have had to submit to the ideological and aesthetical diktats imposed on the previous generation of composers.
His music, always well-sounding and often spectacular, has absorbed all sorts of multiple influences. His very personal world is a work in progress, growing out of the mix of pragmatism and naïveté which is the trademark of all great creators. Over time and along a great diversity of compositions, Guillaume Connesson’s inspiration follows, in the composer’s own words, “the complex mosaïc of the modern world”.

His first steps were guided by a need to open up to other influences, like pop music - as evidenced in Night Club for orchestra (1996), Double Quatuor (1994) and Disco-Toccata (1994). This primarily rhythmic and hedonist vein, so rare in contemporary ‘serious’ music, reached its peak with the brilliant Techno-Parade for flute, clarinet and piano (2002). As in the works of American composers of the repetitive school (Reich, Adams) - another decisive influence, to wit Sextuor (1998) - the spirit of dance is omnipresent in Connesson’s music. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the cinema also inspired him : L’Aurore (1998) was composed as soundtrack to Murnau’s eponymous silent movie. Guillaume Connesson’s orchestral writing tries to create strong images, that will have a long-lasting effect on the listener. Yet he likes the uncertain, the unpredictable, the meandering melodies which find their resolution in a rich, dense, sometimes thick-woven yet always intell(e)gible writing. L’Appel du feu, a suite from L’Aurore, Enluminures (1999) or Triptyque symphonique (1997-2007) demonstrate his unequalled know-how as an orchestrator, whose harmonic twists and turns are always at the service of expression. In other words, the composer’s luminous compositional language is never the result nor the starting point of vain experimentation. Pragmatism vs idealism ? Yes indeed, if that means giving the pleasure of the ear precedence over fruitless speculation. Connesson - how revolutionary - writes music for the knowing musician. With all the means at his disposal, he also tries to adress a wider public by capturing its attention and sharpening its curiosity.

Add to his love of opera the fact that he is not afraid of lyrical outbursts, and it logically follows that Guillaume Connesson would write for the voice. Liturgies de l’ombre, Le Livre de l’amour and Medea, for female voice, all composed between 2000 and 2004, certainly mark a shift, if not a turning point in his career. The pieces reveal a more tormented, anguished inner world. Elegies fraught with emotion (De l’espérance, on a poem by Charles Péguy, or the complete Liturgies de l’ombre cycle ; My Sweet Sister on a poem by Lord Byron in Le Livre de l’amour and even in an orchestra piece from the same period : Une lueur dans l’âge sombre, 2005) or desperate, passionate scenes (the fierce Medea after a text by Jean Vauthier) let new interrogations show through.
His cantata for solo voice, choir and orchestra Athanor (2003) - an ambitious, striking, flamboyant piece - synthetizes all these influences and inspirations. The title is a reference to the alchimist’s furnace. A symbol, not to say an emblem for an artist in ceaseless pursuit of the miracle that would let music instantly turn the next minute into eternity. (Bertrand Dermoncourt)