Hélène Breschand Jean François Pauvros ‎– Sombre

‘The dreamer! That double of our existence, that chiaroscuro of the thinking being’, wrote Gaston Bachelard in 1961. ‘The old is dying, the new cannot be born, and in that chiaroscuro, monsters appear’, adds Antonio Gramsci. Sandrine Piau has chosen to use these two quotations as an epigraph to her new recording: ‘My family and friends know about this obsession that never leaves me completely. The antagonism between light and darkness. The chiaroscuro, the space in between…’ This programme, recorded with the Orchestre Victor Hugo under its conductor Jean-François Verdier, who is also principal clarinettist of the Paris Opéra, travels between the chilly Rhenish forest of Waldgespräch, a ballad by Zemlinsky composed for soprano and small ensemble in 1895, the night of the first of Berg’s Seven Early Songs (1905-08), and the sunlight of Richard Strauss’s Morgen, which are followed by the Four Last Songs, composed in 1948, the first two of which, Frühling and September (evoking spring and autumn respectively) are also, as Sandrine Piau concludes, ‘the seasons of life’.

Jean-François Paillard leads his chamber orchestra in this reference recording of Couperin's "Les Nations". "Les Nations" is a vast project in which the virtues of both the French and Italian styles are set next to each other. Each of the four ordres celebrates a Catholic power of Europe – France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Savoy dynasty of Piedmont – and each is a combination of an Italianate trio sonata with its free-form virtuosity and a large-scale and elaborate French dance suite.

As with many of the composers works, live instruments are combined with electronics in Karlheinz Stockhausens Mantra. Written in 1970, the work is scored for two ring-modulated pianos. Each player is also equipped with a chromatic set of crotales (antique cymbals) and a wood block. A short-wave radio producing morse code or a magnetic tape recording of morse code can either be controlled by one of the pianists or by a separate performer. Mantra was written for the great piano duo of Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky. The pianists performed at the works premiere and on its first recording in 1971 for Deutsche Grammophon. This exciting new recording from Mirare features pianists Jean-Francois Heisser and Jean-Frederic Neuburger, accompanied by Serge Lemouton on electronics.

There is little in the way of a clear theme tying together this collection of Baroque works, which includes music by English and Italian composers, instrumental and vocal, secular and sacred, performed by the French group Ensemble Amarillis with soprano Patricia Petibon and tenor Jean-François Novelli. For the listener looking for a general assortment of pieces from the Baroque era, performed with lively energy, this could be just the thing. Outstanding are the vocal tracks featuring Petibon and Novelli. Petibon, whose jewel-like high soprano shines in the music of Purcell and Francesco Mancini, is a pleasure.

A child wonder who stirred the admiration of the court, Dandrieu was a virtuoso harpsichordist but above all, organist of the Royal Chapel of Versailles from 1721. He left a corpus of work of a rare inventiveness tracing out the chapel's most dazzling musical moments under the reign of Louis XV. Here are 'Magnificats', pieces for Christmas and some splendid hallmark scores that offer snapshots of the liturgical art of the king's organist at the height of the French Baroque. Dandrieu, writes for organ the equal of the harpsichord masterpieces of his time. Jean-Baptiste Robin, organist of the Royal Chapel of Versailles, makes the great organ ring with majesty, thanks to a decade of close familiarity with this historic instrument.

This disc offers works for organ f one of the main French composers of his time. Jean-François Dandrieu was born in Paris and received his first music lessons from his uncle, Pierre, organist of St Barthélemy, and probably also from Jean-Baptiste Moreau. From 1705 until his death he acted as organist of St Merry, a post earlier held by the famous Nicolas Lebègue. In the last years of his life he also succeeded to the position of his uncle at St Barthélemy.

Jean-François Madeuf and Pierre-Yves Madeuf are two of the leading exponents of the historically informed performance practice as applied to wind instruments. On natural horn or natural trumpet they can be found in many of Europe’s main early music ensembles and orchestras. On this new Accent CD, they team up with Sigiswald Kuijken’s exquisite La Petite Bande to perform a set of Georg Philipp Telemann concertos as they have never been heard before on record: using natural trumpets and horns, and bringing the pieces back to their original chamber music context.