Nathy Peluso La Sandunguera

Between 1803 and 1968, the Grand Prix de Rome marked the zenith of composition studies at the Paris Conservatoire. In Maurice Ravel’s time the competition included an elimination round (a fugue and a choral piece) followed by a cantata in the form of an operatic scena. The entries were judged by a jury which generally favoured expertise and conformity more than originality and Ravel’s growing reputation as a member of the avant-garde was therefore hardly to his advantage, and may explain why he never won the coveted Premier Grand Prix, and the three-year stay at Rome’s Villa Medici that went with it.

Johann Sebastian Bach was certainly familiar with the Pantaleon – a large hammered dulcimer with a wide range and full chromatic scale. Bach’s contemporary Pantaleon Hebenstreit had developed the instrument, through which he gained international renown and became one of the best-paid Dresden court musicians. The instrument enjoyed great popularity in the 18th century and was an important precursor of the fortepiano, its younger brother. Bach may have heard Hebenstreit with his Pantaleon himself, as he knew several court musicians of the Dresden orchestra personally and also performed with some of them. Whilst we cannot know if they had met in reality, our imagination has nonetheless been much exercised. What would Bach have put on his famous colleague's music stand? Very little music written for the Pantaleon has survived, although the instrument’s use in the court orchestras of Vienna and Dresden suggests that works for the harpsichord and for the violin in particular could have served for arrangements and improvisations. It is hard to imagine that Bach would have objected to a virtuoso like Hebenstreit adapting his violin sonatas for the Pantaleon.

Flautist Ana de la Vega’s fourth PENTATONE album My Paris is a declaration of love to the glorious French capital and its rich flute history, as well as a trip down memory lane, featuring some of the greatest gems of French music history, including works by Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Satie, Poulenc, Mozart, Chaminade, Lili Boulanger, Von Paradis, as well as Bizet. De la Vega plays these pieces with verve and charm, full of reverence to centuries-old French flute-teaching traditions to which she still feels deeply connected and absorbed. She performs them together with the esteemed pianist Paul Rivinius.

Nothing is as it appears in the old English manor house of Bly. A new governess takes up her post and discovers that the children who are her new charges are under the influence of the ghosts of the previous governess and her depraved lover. As one disturbing event unfolds after another, the questions become more pressing: What horrors happened here before her arrival? Are the children innocent? Do we really see what we are seeing?