Helene Helene (2016)

The essence of Camille Saint-Saëns' music comes through perhaps most clearly in his music for solo instrument and orchestra, which exemplifies his elegant combination of melody and conservatory-generated virtuosity. The two cello concertos are here, plus a pair of crowd-pleasing short works for piano and orchestra, and the evergreen Carnival of the Animals, with pianists Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier joining forces along with a collection of instruments that includes the often-omitted glass harmonica. There are all kinds of attractions here: the gently humorous and not over-broad Carnival, the songful cello playing of Truls Mørk, and the little-known piano-and-orchestra scene Africa, Op. 89, with its lightly Tunisian flavor (sample this final track). But really, the central thread connecting them all is the conducting of Neeme Järvi and the light, graceful work of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; French music is the nearly 80-year-old Järvi's most congenial environment, and in this recording, perhaps his last devoted to Saint-Saëns, he has never been better.

This is a relatively new venture for the outstandingly imaginative recording outfit that is Opera Rara. The label's fifty-fourth recording sees them venturing on an uncompleted work by Donizetti, the composer they love the most. The composer had decamped from Naples to Paris when the censors, on the king’s personal instructions, banned his opera Poliuto.

Moana: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack to the 2016 Disney animated film Moana. The soundtrack was released by Walt Disney Records on November 19, 2016. It features songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa'i, with lyrics in English, Samoan, Tokelauan language and 'An Innocent Warrior' with lyrics in Tuvalu. The two-disc deluxe edition includes the score, which was composed by Mancina, as well as demos, outtakes and instrumental karaoke tracks. The album debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at number 16 and peaked at number 2, kept off the top spot by The Weeknd's Starboy. "How Far I'll Go" was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

For her first solo album with ATMA Classique, the celebrated Canadian soprano Hélène Brunet has chosen baroque and classical arias that have always been part of her life and for which she feels a deep affinity. Under the direction of Eric Milnes, the period ensemble L'Harmonie des saisons accompanies her in this program featuring music by Bach Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart and Leonardo Vinci, whose two arias are recorded here as world premieres. I remember being completely enamored, at fifteen, with Vivaldis famous aria Nulla in mundo pax sincera, attempting head voice singing for the first time and discovering the peculiar lightheaded effects of this new vocal technique.

Juliette Hurel's 2013 album on Naïve explores pieces for flute and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert, evoking the period between Classicism and early Romanticism. Perhaps the subtlest work of the program is Beethoven's Flute Sonata in B flat major, WoO A4, written in 1790 and fashioned under the influence of Haydn. Its sunny disposition and light textures are periodically interrupted by unexpected key changes and sudden digressions into the minor, characteristics that anticipate Beethoven's later development and mark it as a transitional work. His Serenade for flute and piano, Op. 41, is an arrangement of the Serenade for flute, violin, and viola, Op. 25, and it has a similar, if sometimes deceptive, air of Classical simplicity, which is all the more apparent because of the brevity of the movements. Only Schubert's Variations on a Theme from Die schöne Müllerin is unequivocally Romantic, and its sudden changes of mood and key make it the most fascinating piece on the disc.

Per Nørgård (b. 1932) is regarded by many as Denmark's greatest living composer, with some of his music being hard edged and difficult to approach. This music on this disc will not suit everyone, it is quite difficult to understand where the composer is going at times, and in the case of the "Plutonian Ode", which is for soprano and solo cello, I found little to like, perhaps it is because the first two sections are for recitation, but I found it just grates with me! This is not to say that there isn't anything to like here, on the contrary, the disc opens with his "Two Recitatives Op. 16" which sets texts by the Swedish poet, playwright and novelist, Pär Fabian Lagerkvist.