Véronique Gens / Ensemble Les Surprises / Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas PASSION

 

PASSION

 

David Greilsammer LABYRINTH

 

LABYRINTH

 

Marie Magistry / Sylvain Bergeron LA BERGÈRE

LA BERGÈRE

 

Le Concert Spirituel / Hervé Niquet LULLY Armide

ARMIDE

Chœur de Chambre de Namur / Millenium Orchestra / Leonardo García Alarcón LULLY Dies Iræ - De Profundis - Te Deum

                                            DIES IRAE - DE PROFUNDIS - TE DEUM

Alexandre Tharaud VERSAILLES

                                                                   VERSAILLES

Dorothee Oberlinger / Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca NIGHT MUSIC

Dorothee Oberlinger is one of the most amazing discoveries of recent years, an expressive virtuoso who - quite rightly - received numerous awards while still quite young. Today she is seen as one of the best recorder-players in the world. Her concerts have been received with enthusiasm by critics and audiences alike, earning her unanimous acclaim. Her CDs are regularly fêted as the best new issues on the market.

Dorothee Oberlinger has given solo recitals at festivals all over Europe, in America and Japan, for example at the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, the Musikfestspiele Potsdam, the Settimane Musicale Stresa, the Nederlandse Oude-Musik-Network, the Festival de Musica Antigua Sajazarra, the Warsaw Beethoven Festival, the Europäische Musikfestwoche Passau, the Rheingau-Musikfestival, the Tage der Alten Musik Regensburg and the MDR-Musiksommer. Other venues in which she has played include the Wigmore Hall in London, the National Philharmonie in Warsaw, the Marianischer Saal in Lucerne, the Rosée Theater in Fuji and the Philharmonie in Cologne.

She has been the guest soloist with leading international Baroque ensembles such as London Baroque and Musica Antiqua Köln directed by Reinhard Goebel, and she also plays regularly with modern symphony orchestras such as the WDR-Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester and the Detmolder Kammerorchester.

Dorothee Oberlinger collaborates particularly intensively with the top Italian ensemble "Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca", with whom she has given many concerts throughout Europe. Their joint CD of concertos by Antonio Vivaldi has received numerous awards from the international musical press.

She directs her own "Ensemble 1700", which she formed in 2003. Together they have realized a wide variety of projects relating to the music of the 17th and 18th centuries.

In 2004 Dorothee Oberlinger was appointed professor at the renowned Mozarteum academy in Salzburg.

Il Giardino d’Amore / Stefan Plewniak / Natalia Kawalek / Dawid Biwo AMOR SACRO AMOR PROFANO

 Love is crazy one may say, love you can not define,  love is all you need. Amor, Amore, l’Amour,  Je t’aime … so many ways to express something sweet inside of us, in some quiet secret and sacred part of our souls. Amor Sacro Amor Profano gently and softly leads us to this world where love write her own scenarios.

Amor Sacro Amor Profano features music of Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Lully, Charpentier, Stradella, Caresana, Corelii. 

Véronique Gens / Les Talens Lyriques / Christophe Rousset TRAGÉDIENNES

The tragic operas of the French Baroque can be rough going for the new listener, whose eyes may glaze over when hearing about rules of French prosody, classical models, and Lully's dominance of the scene. But this single-disc recital solves any problems you may have had in encountering operatic music from Lully to Gluck. Credit soprano Véronique Gens, who has often sung lighter material and now is turning to the serious works of Rameau and his era at just the right time. Her voice is impressively versatile, with a muscular medium-wave vibrato that can easily drop off into a stage whisper or rise into anger. Credit conductor Christophe Rousset and his group Les Talens Lyriques, with their on-the-ball, sensitive accompaniment and unique catgut-scraping string sound. Credit booklet writer Jean Duron for a quick, painless introduction to the 100-year history of how French opera composers, working in the centralized musical system of the French monarchy, responded to the musical world as it changed around them. Credit the engineers from Virgin Classics, who have made the Church of Notre Dame-du-Liban in Paris into something resembling a close-up, row-five theatrical experience, and caught the powerful sense of immediacy and communication in Gens' singing. And credit whoever devised the program, which offers good-sized chunks of music from various operas, complete with overtures and other instrumental interludes, instead of a sequence of disconnected arias and random sonatas linked to the main program only by chronology. This album will earn praise from those who follow Gens closely, and for the general listener looking to hear some French Baroque opera arias it's a godsend -- the tragic heroine is a central figure of the era, and Gens and company have brought her fully to life. (James Manheim)

Le Concert Spirituel / Hervé Niquet LULLY Persée 1770

Nearly a century after its composition, Lully’s Persée was recreated in 1770 to mark an exceptional event: the inauguration of the Royal Opera House at Versailles Palace, built to celebrate the wedding of the Dauphin (the future Louis XVI) and Marie Antoinette. For this unique occasion, three composers (Antoine Dauvergne, François Rebel and Bernard de Bury) were commissioned to revise Lully’s work and adapt it to the new circumstances and the new venue, which was regarded as absolutely extraordinary in its time.

Lovers of Lully’s opera will therefore meet their mythological hero again, now with a richer orchestration and more for the chorus and the ballet dancers to do. There were only two performances in 1770, but they were absolutely sumptuous: 95 choristers, 15 soloists, 80 dancers, 100 extras, 80 instrumentalists, five sets and 530 costumes.

You can now relive that historic event thanks to a recording conducted by the leading specialist in this repertory, Hervé Niquet, and a CD-book richly illustrated with engravings of the period and photos of the Opéra Royal and of manuscripts of the score.

Recorded at Versailles Palace in 2016, in collaboration with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.

Les Paladins / Jérôme Correas MOLIÈRE À L'OPÉRA Stage music by JEAN-BAPTISTE LULLY

With Molière à l’opéra Jérôme Correas and Les Paladins bring their much-admired combination of Baroque musical stylishness and use of the technique of “parlé-chanté”, adding colour and contrast to the sung text, to comédies-ballets composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marc-Antoine Charpentier during the reign of Louis XIV. The musical and theatrical partnership involving Lully and Molière – they were dubbed “les deux Baptiste” – was one of the most invigorating ever entered into, marrying melody, words, acting and a shared hunger for fame.

The collaboration spanned ten works over a decade from 1661. Although Molière never provided the words for a Lully “opera”, the great dramatist clearly inspired the composer who was ten years his junior, in his later tragédies lyriques, a view upheld by the essayist for this recording, Elizabeth Giuliani. 

As well as presenting scenes from Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, this new Glossa recording draws on the humorous end of the Molière/Lully partnership in Monsieur de Pourceaugnac as well as more tragic airs from Psyché, by way of the trio grotesque from Charpentier’s score for Le Mariage forcé. In Luanda Siqueira, Jean-François Lombard, Jérôme Billy and Virgile Ancely, Jérôme Correas has brought together a versatile vocal quartet, alive to the daunting and frequently crazy characterizations demanded by Lully and Molière. (GLOSSA Music)