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Marin Marais published his last collection in 1725, eight years after the appearance of his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole . He was no longer playing in the Chambre du Roi by that time and had moved to a house in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau where he cultivated plants and flowers in his garden. He continued, however, to give lessons to people who wanted to improve their viol playing. The Cinquième Livre de Pièces de Viole reflects this image of a peaceful life; today we regard it as the final testament of a musician who was looking back upon his past years as their undisputed master — and which he remains today.

During Albinoni’s lifetime (1671-1751) four separate collections of sonatas with violin were published under his name, though only the Trattenimenti armonici Op.6 were prepared by their composer. The works in Op.6 have accordingly dominated the record catalogues and obscured the virtues of the others, which Federico Guglielmo presents here with his customary flair and feeling for the Italian Baroque which has previously yielded the much-praised Brilliant Classics collection of Vivaldi’s Opp 1-12 (95200) as well as the Op.1 Trio Sonatas (94789) by Albinoni himself.

Michel McLean (guitar, ex-Les Karrik) and Pierre Moreau write most of the music for L'Engoulevent, and the core band is completed by Francoise Turcotte (violin) and Russel Cagnon (cello). They are aided by a number of musicians from Conventum, as well as McLean's old Les Karrik cohort Claude LaFrance on one track. Their first album was entitled "L'Ile Ou Vivent Les Loups", and was released on the Le Tamanour label in 1977. Roughly half the tracks are instrumental, and the vocal tracks are done in a folk style but are not traditional pieces. Perhaps because half the core band is employed on string instruments, there is both an exquisite beauty and contrapuntal richness to much of the music. There can sometimes be three semi-independent, but mutually supportive, harmonic lines going at once…

L'heure espagnole is a French one-act opera from 1911, described as a comédie musicale, with music by Maurice Ravel to a French libretto by Franc-Nohain, based on Franc-Nohain's 1904 play ('comédie-bouffe') of the same name. The opera, set in Spain in the 18th century, is about a clockmaker whose unfaithful wife attempts to make love to several different men while he is away, leading to them hiding in, and eventually getting stuck in, her husband's clocks. The title can be translated literally as "The Spanish Hour", but the word "heure" also means "time" – "Spanish Time", with the connotation "How They Keep Time in Spain".

Flanked by a spectacular cast featuring the role debuts of Nicky Spence (named ‘Personality of the Year’ by BBC Music Magazine in 2022) and Simona Šaturová, the conductor Ben Glassberg (Music Director of the Opéra de Rouen Normandie) once again demonstrates his Mozartian temperament. This late masterpiece (written at the same time as Die Zauberflöte) places his musical genius at the service of a plot centred on the complexity of emotions, passionate love and the absurd disaster of betrayal.

The opera L’incontro improvviso (The Unexpected Encounter), a work set in Egypt’s Cairo when it was under Ottoman dominion, was the main musical attraction during the four days of festivities held at Esterház Castle, near Süttör, at the end of August 1775 and hosted by Prince Nikolaus I Esterházy. The occasion was a visit from the Viennese imperial court led by Ferdinand Karl, Empress Maria Theresia’s second youngest son, the later Governor of Lombardy and the founder of the House of Austria-Este.