Les Nuits Que L'on Choisit Élise Costa

A travers une série d'affaires criminelles (Bourseau, Troadec et Lelandais notamment), la journaliste et chroniqueuse judiciaire décrit les rouages de la justice. Elle montre la difficulté de juger les crimes ainsi que le caractère insaisissable de la nature humaine. …

Un jeune homme rêveur et solitaire se promène dans les rues de Saint-Pétersbourg pour tromper son ennui. Lorsqu'il croise une jeune femme en pleurs, prénommée Nastienka, il surmonte sa timidité pour l'aborder et tombe sous son charme. Nuit après nuit, ils font connaissance, mais Nastienka ne voit en lui qu'un simple confident. …

The dance permeated every layer of Romantic society. From popular dance halls to courtly salons, people showed their public face, enjoyed themselves and met one another in waltz time or to the rhythms of the quadrille or the polka. At the same time, ballet gained unprecedented fame on the stage of the Paris Opéra. The music that accompanied this frantic round in France has long been neglected, whereas the Viennese have never ceased to celebrate their waltzes. Under the expert baton of François-Xavier Roth, the orchestra Les Siècles has set out to rediscover this French repertory using historical instruments. Their album explores the output of both established composers – Camille Saint-Saëns, Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet – and their colleagues who specialised in Terpsichorean entertainment, including Philippe Musard, Isaac Strauss, Émile Waldteufel and Hervé.

On this new period instrument recording of “Les Nuits d’Été” and the symphony “Harold in Italy” by Hector Berlioz, from the award winning musical director Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, the featured soloists are two of the leading exponents of their art in recent years, the mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and the viola player Antoine Tamestit.

A new aesthetic calls for new forms: such is the challenge the composer set for himself in the two works presented here. In Les Nuits d’été, Berlioz pioneered, well before Mahler and Ravel, a song cycle for voice and orchestra. In Harold in Italy, scored for large orchestra and solo viola, he experimented with the symphonic genre. These period-instrument performances by Les Siècles, led by François-Xavier Roth, with violist Tabea Zimmermann, also feature Stéphane Degout in the vocal cycle, heard here in the composer’s own version for baritone. File under: out of the ordinary.

"Throughout her fifty year career Barbara Hendricks has shown herself to be one of the greatest champions of French song. This has always held a special place in her repertory and in her heart, as have German lieder, Scandinavian and Spanish songs (not to mention jazz and blues); her musical world has no limits. For this new recording made in 2016, the Swedish soprano pays homage both to her singing teacher and mentor, the great American mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, and to the creative genius of Hector Berlioz. If the Nuits d’été have long formed part of her repertory, the two cantatas Herminie and Cléopâtre are new."

Throughout her fifty year career Barbara Hendricks has shown herself to be one of the greatest champions of French song. This has always held a special place in her repertory and in her heart, as have German lieder, Scandinavian and Spanish songs (not to mention jazz and blues); her musical world has no limits. For this new recording made in 2016, the Swedish soprano pays homage both to her singing teacher and mentor, the great American mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel, and to the creative genius of Hector Berlioz. If the Nuits d’été have long formed part of her repertory, the two cantatas Herminie and Cléopâtre are new.

Une réflexion philosophique, théologique et spirituelle sur les ressources chrétiennes expliquant l'expérience du tragique, ainsi que sur la portée d'un dogme mal compris. …