L'etoile Du Berger

Merveilleux Labrit, vif, intelligent, toujours en mouvement. C'est par excellence le chien de conduite du troupeau. Le Patou, lui, c'est la force tranquille, l'irremplaçable gardien, capable de faire face à l'ours, comme au loup. À travers l'histoire et la vie de ces chiens du berger, Jacques Coly brosse le portrait d'une communauté pastorale pyrénéenne, étonnamment vivante. …

There are two different short operas (from 1754 and 1757) by Rameau with the title Anacréon. Both are one-act actes de ballet; this one was actually used as the third entrée of Rameau's opéra-ballet Les surprises de l'Amour when it was revived the same year. Both works have as their subject the Greek poet, Anacreon. The 1757 one - which was first performed at the Paris Opéra in May of that year and has a libretto by Pierre-Joseph Justin Bernard - has an only marginally less slight ‘plot’ than the earlier Anacréon. It follows an argument as to the relative merits of love and wine. That’s resolved in Anacreon’s favour by L’Amour; in fact, he believes the two are not incompatible.

La Naissance d'Osiris (Osiris birth) was performed in 1754 at the birth of Louis XVI in Fontainebleau. Rameau composed the one-act ballet based on a libretto by Louis de Cahusac, who has already provided the libretto for numerous other works by Rameau (Zoroastre, Anacréon, Les Fêtes de l'hymen et de l'Amour …). The piece depicts the birth of the goddess Osiris and symbolizes the birth of the grandson of Louis XV.

Une biographie de Michel Berger soulignant que sa vie a été marquée par les drames et les abandons : son père quitte le domicile conjugal quand il a 7 ans, son meilleur ami se suicide quand il est adolescent, etc. La musique est son seul refuge, où personne ne peut pénétrer. Grâce à un travail obstiné, il crée une oeuvre ambitieuse qui lui survit après sa mort en 1992. …

When Pablo Casals rediscovered the cello suites of Bach at the beginning of the 20th century, the novel thing about it was that he played them "senza basso", i.e. without piano accompaniment. In a time of music-historical over-maturity and experimentation, renowned composers soon came up with their own attempts, among them most famously Max Reger's "Solo Suites" and Kodály's "Solo Sonata", both written in 1915.

Myhre makes his solo debut with the release of the captivating and mysterious Unheimlich Manoeuvre. The title is an obvious play on the life-saving technique, though whether the added negation makes the threatening or simply subverted remains ambiguous. More to the point, the English translation of unheimlich is “uncanny” or “eerie” – an apt descriptor for the sounds that Myhre creates. To borrow a phrase from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Myhre conjures aural landscapes that suggest “a place both wonderful and strange,” stunning in their beauty with something alluringly unsettling lurking just underneath.