Nicolas Medtne

Composer John Adams' album Road Movies contains five pieces that Adams' considers "travel music, (…) passing through harmonic and textural regions as one would pass through on a car trip." Indeed, during Leila Josefowicz's spirited and appropriately brusque reading of the "40% Swing" movement from the title work, one hears what sounds like a passing auto in the left channel. Is it mere coincidence or the album concept channeling onto the master tape?

On ne se lasse pas d'écouter Nicolas et ses copains, littéralement animés par l'immense talent de Benoît Poelvoorde. Dynamisme, humour, fraîcheur, drôlerie…

Nicolas Altstaedt presents here his version of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s monumental Cello Concerto, originally composed for Yo-Yo Ma, and given its Finnish premiere by the Franco-German cellist under the composer’s direction. In partnership with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, he reveals its full expressive dimension here: ‘The first movement opens with what, in my sketchbook, was called “Chaos to line”’, says Esa-Pekka Salonen. Chaos, a metaphorical comet, a rhythmic mantra with congas and bongos, a wild dance… Salonen goes on to say of the third movement: ‘I imagined the orchestra as some kind of gigantic lung, expanding and contracting first slowly, but accelerating to a point of mild hyperventilation which leads back to the dance-like material’.

Giulio Caccini played a decisive role in the birth of the solo madrigal. He not only accompanied himself as he sang them, but also formed the Concerto Caccini with his wife and children; this ensemble would go as far as to leave its mark on the French court. This double album features some of Caccini’s finest works as well as pieces by his two daughters Francesca and Settimia. It also provides the perfect opportunity for Scherzi Musicali to assemble some thirty instruments and to present the combinations of instruments used for the continuo group that developed around 1600.