La Ianva

Some albums exist outside of time or place, gently floating on their own style and sensibility. Of those, the La’s lone album may be the most beguiling, a record that consciously calls upon the hooks and harmonies of 1964 without seeming fussily retro, a trick that anticipated the cheerful classicism of the Brit-pop ’90s. But where their sons Oasis and Blur were all too eager to carry the torch of the past, Lee Mavers and the La’s exist outside of time, suggesting the ’60s in their simple, tuneful, acoustic-driven arrangements but seeming modern in their open, spacy approach, sometimes as ethereal as anything coming out of the 4AD stable but brought down to earth by their lean, no-nonsense attack, almost as sinewy as any unaffected British Invasion band.

This recording features a work with a strange coincidence in its compositional process and an astonishing dual authorship. Remarkably, Silvius Leopold Weiss’s Lute Suite SW47 (which he named Suonata) also comes with a violin part that can be played over the top of it, composed by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. A recent comparison of sources revealed that the harpsichord part in Bach’s Suite for Violin & Harpsichord BWV1025, long considered to be of doubtful attribution, perfectly matches Weiss’s suite. The violin part, meanwhile, was indeed composed entirely by Bach and is an additional melody independent of Weiss’s musical material. It feels almost like a ‘free improvisation’ above the suite and recalls a similar process carried out by Charles Gounod in 1859: his Ave Maria fits over the first Prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier BWV846. The sole exception is the Fantasia movement in Bach’s piece, which is not derived from Weiss’s suite, meaning both the violin and harpsichord parts in it are unique to Bach.

This recording features a work with a strange coincidence in its compositional process and an astonishing dual authorship. Remarkably, Silvius Leopold Weiss’s Lute Suite SW47 (which he named Suonata) also comes with a violin part that can be played over the top of it, composed by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. A recent comparison of sources revealed that the harpsichord part in Bach’s Suite for Violin & Harpsichord BWV1025, long considered to be of doubtful attribution, perfectly matches Weiss’s suite. The violin part, meanwhile, was indeed composed entirely by Bach and is an additional melody independent of Weiss’s musical material. It feels almost like a ‘free improvisation’ above the suite and recalls a similar process carried out by Charles Gounod in 1859: his Ave Maria fits over the first Prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier BWV846. The sole exception is the Fantasia movement in Bach’s piece, which is not derived from Weiss’s suite, meaning both the violin and harpsichord parts in it are unique to Bach.

1694: the first French opera composed by a woman is premiered at the Academie royale de musique. The fateful destiny of the Greek lovers, driven to blindness and horror by the gods: Cephalus will kill Procris, whom he believes to be unfaithful, and himself… A virtuoso harpsichordist much appreciated by Louis XIV, Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre chose to become a composer at a time when such freedom was virtually unheard of for a woman. Her gamble paid off, with six performances and the admiration of posterity: this flamboyant work has finally been brought back to the public by Reinoud van Mechelen.

1694: the first French opera composed by a woman is premiered at the Academie royale de musique. The fateful destiny of the Greek lovers, driven to blindness and horror by the gods: Cephalus will kill Procris, whom he believes to be unfaithful, and himself… A virtuoso harpsichordist much appreciated by Louis XIV, Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre chose to become a composer at a time when such freedom was virtually unheard of for a woman. Her gamble paid off, with six performances and the admiration of posterity: this flamboyant work has finally been brought back to the public by Reinoud van Mechelen.

The Monteverdi contemporary Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) is now unfortunately almost exclusively seen as an important and influential composer of works for keyboard instruments, but he also composed both sacred and secular vocal music throughout his entire creative period.

The first ever album dedicated to the music of Ernest Shand, including several first recordings.

This new OSR recording presents the two most ambitious musical responses to Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 epoch-making play Pelléas et Mélisande.

Founded in 1906, Les Petits Chanteurs à la Croix des Bois (Little Singers of the Wooden Cross) are renowned as one of the world's most established children's choirs. Founded by Paul Berthier and Pierre Martin, two students on vacation at l'Abbeye de Tamie, the Paris-based traveling choir broke tradition with its lack of affiliation to a particular parish or cathedral. Directed by Father Fernand Maillet, they soon developed an international presence thanks to performances at the Vatican and an appearance in the 1945 film La Cage aux Rossignols, and continued to remain active throughout the 20th century, with singer/songwriter Matthieu Chédid, Les Prêtres' Charles Troesch, and Olympic rowing champion Adrien Hardy among some of their famous former members. By its centenary year, which was celebrated by a France2 show featuring duets with the likes of Tina Arena, Lara Fabian, and Nolwenn Leroy, the choir school had developed into a full-time educational institution, combining regular studies with a global touring schedule.