Outhere Music

World premiere recording: Although the turn of the twentieth century marked the golden age of French song, the genre was generally accompanied on the piano and only rarely orchestrated by its composers. But Camille Saint-Saëns, a great lover of poetry, was also a champion of the orchestrated mélodie and the French coloristic style. He also wanted to counterbalance the overwhelming popularity of operatic arias in concert programmes. An immense admirer of Victor Hugo, Saint-Saëns set many of his poems to music, including L'Enlèvement, Rêverie, and Le Pas d'armes du Roi Jean, regarded as one of his masterpieces. Exoticism and a certain sense of the supernatural run through such songs as Danse macabre, one of the most popular pieces of classical music, but always heard nowadays either in its version for orchestra alone or performed by a singer with piano accompaniment. Of the twenty-five mélodies with orchestra listed in the catalogue of Saint-Saëns, nineteen are recorded here, all of them for the first time!

The pianist Jonathan Fournel, recent prizewinner of the prestigious 2021 Queen Elisabeth Competition (where he won not only the Queen Elisabeth Grand Prix, but also the Queen Mathilde Prize, the Musiq3 Audience Prize and the Canvas-Klara Award) has joined the Alpha label for several recordings, starting with a Brahms programme recorded in the superb acoustic of the music room at La Chaux-de-Fonds just before the Competition: ‘Over the years, for me Brahms has become a figure I admire so tremendously, a composer I can never tire of. It was fairly obvious to me that I had to make my first recording with these two works that I love so much (…) The rich quality of this music conjures up the profundity and grandeur of a symphony for the piano – and in such an astonishing way.’ The 28-year-old French pianist has been gathering many plaudits for his concerts – in particular for a sensational recital at La Roque d’Anthéron – and shows all the signs of developing a great career and a highly individual artistic path.

Under the artistic direction of Nicolas Altstaedt, this multi-award winning series in collaboration with the Lockenhaus Festival continues to bring to light great works of chamber music by composers who are already well known or still awaiting discovery. Schoenberg was in his early seventies when he composed his String Trio op. 45 in 1946, completing it after suffering a terrible heart attack. He told Thomas Mann that the trio reflected his physical and psychological condition of that period. The composer Constantin Regamey, born in Kiev in 1907, is little known. A Swiss of Polish descent, he was also a pianist, music critic and writer, who was appointed lecturer in Indian philology at Warsaw University in 1936. He joined the Polish Resistance in 1942 and it was at this time that he wrote his Quintet for clarinet, bassoon, violin, cello and piano.

Soprano Anna Prohaska and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja are both well known for their taste for eclecticism, experimentation and adventure. As they are also are friends, it was only to be expected that one day they would devise and record a programme together, and here it is: Maria Mater Meretrix… What is the relationship between Hildegard von Bingen and Gustav Holst, Antonio Caldara and Lili Boulanger? The two musicians and their partners in Camerata Bern explore the image of woman through ten centuries of music: the figure of the Virgin Mary – among other works, the triptych Magnificat - Ave Maria - Stabat Mater (1967/68) by Frank Martin, an unclassifiable composer whom both artists venerate – but also Mary Magdalene, in pieces by Caldara and Kurtág. The Saint, the Mother, the Whore… The expression of two women musicians of today, a journey full of meaning and a sensory exploration featuring solos, duets, quartets and works for large orchestra.

Venice was surely the capital of music and the arts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and one of the most coveted positions in the city was that of maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica.

The Baroque dream team of Rachel Podger and Kristian Bezuidenhout interpret the astonishing music of C.P.E. Bach’s Violin Sonatas in C Minor, B Minor, D Major and G Minor. The two early sonatas here from the 1730s resemble the older style of his father. Listening to these works, you can imagine J.S. Bach glancing over Emanuel's shoulders while he wrote them as a teenager at home in Leipzig. The later sonatas, written 30 to 50 years later, reveal an emancipated composer whose developed musical language embodies the 'Empfindsamer Stil', the directly emotional and rhetorical style characteristic of northern-german music of the time.

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.

This album celebrates dance music, from waltz to tango, from slow foxtrot to quickstep, from samba to jive. Seventy years of music rooted in the 1920s, assembled by the enthusiastic musicians of the Ludwig Orchestra, who have taken to playing them at festivals, alongside their usual programmes devoted to Stravinsky or Schoenberg, to get the audience dancing – a phenomenal success story that now becomes an album, Dance with me!

A journey through countries, periods and styles on the theme of dance. The themes and melodies are borrowed from Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Italian, English, Hungarian and French composers, inspired by folk music and dances. Édouard Ferlet has used this music to compose new pieces, arranged for harpsichord and piano. There are no direct quotations here, rather a thread which is woven between these well-known melodies and a new musical vocabulary. In each piece Violaine Cochard and Edouard Ferlet improvise freely, each with their individual ‘temperament’ and sensibility. They work on sonority, texture, the exploration of sound palettes, specialization, phrasing, distillation. The two artists seek to develop sonic possibilities, articulations, playing techniques and interaction between their musical personalities. A special feature is their work on pulse and tempo, with compound meters linked with the rhythms of folksongs and dances, which are often in compound time. Each piece is underpinned by an individual dramaturgy; the melodies are immediately appealing because they remind us of something while surprising us with jazz and contemporary arrangements.

How to read Ronsard today? Simply aloud or in singing it, like back then. Because, for Ronsard, nothing is more obvious than to unite music and poetry: “I also want you to encourage you to pronounce your verses loudly in your room, when you do them, or sooner sing them, whatever voice can have. » Ronsard, Abbrégé de l’Art poétique françois, 1565 As soon as the collection of Loves was published, it was fashionable for a composer to set these poems to music. To quote the most famous: Goudimel, Certon, and of course Janequin. But long after death of the poet, many composers have continued to do so: Bizet, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Poulenc… It is because Ronsard’s texts have no no age; Pick the roses of life today is a principle immortal. Julien Joubert reads poetry every day, aloud and even the most often while singing. It was therefore only natural that he lean on the work by Ronsard.