Outhere Music

Jos van Immerseel and Claire Chevallier have enjoyed a close collaboration for many years now. Like Jos van Immerseel, Claire Chevallier loves period pianos; like him, she is a researcher and possesses her own collection of keyboard instruments.

Nino Rota was not only the man who wrote film scores for Fellini (La strada etc), René Clément and King Vidor. He was also a twentieth-century great composer. A child prodigy, he studied in America with Fritz Reiner, crossed paths with Toscanini, Igor Stravinsky and many others. Éric Le Sage, Emmanuel Pahud, Paul Meyer, Daishin Kashimoto, Aurélien Pascal and their partners from the Salon de Provence festival pay tribute to his music with the Piccola Offerta Musicale (Little Musical Offering), composed in 1943 at the age of twenty-two, alongside a Nonet and a Trio for flute, violin and piano, both written in the late 1950s. The Trio for clarinet, cello and piano (1973) comes from Rota’s last creative period and has all the characteristics of his mature works.

Ceremonies, both festive and solemn, lie at the heart of all the works in this programme devoted to German music of the 17th century, beginning with music by Heinrich Schütz and ending with Johann Sebastian Bach. These occasional works make frequent use of brass instruments, whose sound is both the foundation and the identity of the InAlto ensemble. This 17th century tradition is reflected in Beethoven’s Aequales for trombone quartet; these are presented here together with their sung texts.

Mantua and the Gonzaga family represent one of the summits of European humanistic and Renaissance expression. This project addresses one of the city's greatest periods with sacred works by the leading musicians of the Gonzaga court, at a time when music was the primary tool employed by the Gonzaga dukes to assert their prestige over other Italian cities; this golden age began with the foundation of the Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara and its cappella under Giaches de Wert during the rule of Guglielmo Gonzaga in 1565 and lasted until the sack of Mantua in 1630. The Ensemble Biscantores specialise in the performance of late Renaissance and Baroque music; here, thanks to the research, study and transcriptions made by its director Luca Colombo, they explore the Mantuan court of the Gonzagas and the liturgy specific to the Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara.

Harmonieuses Dissonances: that is the title of the string quartet that closes this second album of music by Eric Montalbetti, but above all it is a statement of the very subject of the works assembled here: they start out from heterogeneous elements, like the diversity of the people we know, or of our moods and thoughts, and aim – through encounters, comparisons, organisation or a search for common ground – to find the meaning of a life that we hope will, in the end, be harmonious. Since the first album of his music, Solos, appeared in 2016, Eric Montalbetti has been fortunate enough to hear seventeen of his scores come to life thanks to some wonderful musicians in France, Germany, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Japan and Korea. Two duos (including a Hommage à Matisse), a piano trio and a string quartet, were premiered and have now been recorded by Christian Tetzlaff and Alexandre Vorontsov, Delphine Haidan and Pierre Génisson, the soloists of the Ensemble intercontemporain and the Quatuor Les Dissonances.

In the domain of chamber music, César Franck is mainly remembered for his three mature masterpieces: the Violin Sonata, the Piano Quintet and the String Quartet. However, right from his early days in Paris, the young piano virtuoso wrote and performed a number of compositions, chiefly keyboard trios, which were published as his op. 1 and earned him a favourable opinion from Franz Liszt! The masters of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and their artists in residence now invite us to enjoy the first complete recording of this set.

Acclaimed for its ‘rhythmic verve, spontaneity and riot of splendid colours’ (Pizzicato magazine on Giovanni Picchi’s Canzoni da Sonar con ogni sorte d’istromenti ), Concerto Scirocco now immerses itself in the English musical scene of the Elizabethan era, and more especially the genres of the masque and the fantasia.

"The perfect dancing is memory, tempo, style, how the body is held, the diversity of things and the sharing of space…". So begins one of the first dance treatises in history, written by the Italian dancing master Antonio Cornazzano in the 15th century. To go beyond the steps and figures he describes is to understand the symbolic role of this art, its aim to unite earthbound humanity with the kingdom of God. This recording echoes this universalist vision, following the thread of the first notated dances and exploring the songs or pieces that were sometimes also the source and inspiration of more refined compositions: Estampies and other forgotten dances of the Middle Ages; aristocratic basse-danses that were in vogue at the court of Burgundy; saltarelli of the bourgeoning Italian Renaissance; allemandes and heady branles danced at the revels of François I. On this recording, Into the Winds gleefully explores a great variety of spaces and aesthetics and reveal the timelessness of this art more than ever.

The Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary Series sees tenor Liam Bonthrone make his recording debut. Soirée parisienne takes us on a journey into the fascinating world of Parisian salons, which were the epicentre of the cultural scene in nineteenth-century France. These social gatherings provided a platform for new and established composers to showcase their works to a discerning audience and introduce new musical styles and trends. Accompanied by pianist Benjamin Mead, Liam Bonthrone highlights the contributions of three of the most influential salonnières of their time: Pauline Viardot, Comtesse Élisabeth Greffulhe and Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac. Liam Bonthrone is one of the exceptional artists, including Xiaowen Shang (piano), Cassandra Wright (soprano) and Anna Im (violin), who are the recent recipients of the Academy’s Bicentenary Scholarships scheme.