Pierre Alexandre Nicolas

On croit tout savoir de l'eau, de cet élément qui est essentiel à la vie… Ce n'est pas le cas ! De nombreux chercheurs, dont Pierre Nicolas, ont étudié l'eau et y ont trouvé des choses extraordinaires.

This disc is part of a remarkable series on France's Alpha label, pairing mostly Baroque repertories with detailed presentations of visual artworks that are either contemporary with the music or otherwise somehow related to it. You can get a good education in art of the seventeenth century just by buying these discs as they appear. Look at the dramatically lit detail from a 1663 painting by Lubin Baugin on the cover of the disc (the entire painting, along with other details, is reproduced inside).

Quel roman que celui de la longue relation – trois siècles – qui tant de fois attira, unit, opposa, réconcilia la Russie et la France !
La Russie, État-continent qui s’étend en Europe et en Asie, s’est toujours revendiqué puissance européenne. Et l’Europe, pour la Russie, fut d’abord et toujours la France. Celle de Louis XIV, des Lumières, de la Révolution et de l’Empire, des idées, de la langue, de la culture, de la liberté et de la puissance. …

This 20cd box set dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the music of versailles. The box set is beautifully packaged with complete english translations featuring distinguished baroque artists such as les arts florissant's with william christie, les musiciens du louvre with marc minkowski, les talens lyriques with christophe rousset, paul agnew, bernarda fink, veronique gens, patricia petibon and many more. The majority of these recordings have been recorded live during the festival at versailles palace and have never been commercially available. Approximately 5% has been licensed from warners and glossa. It is manufactured in france and put out by the centre of baroque music in versailles.

Sandrine Piau and Véronique Gens have a longstanding rapport and dreamed of making a recording together. Here they pay tribute to two singers who, like them, were born within a year of each other, Mme Dugazon (1755-1821) and Mme Saint-Huberty (1756-1812): both enjoyed triumphant careers in Paris, inspiring numerous librettists and composers. Gluck even nicknamed Saint-Huberty ‘Madamela- Ressource’, while ‘a Dugazon’ became a generic name for the roles of naïve girls in love, and later of comical mothers. Rivals? They very likely were, given the quarrelsome spirit of the operatic world of the time, even if they never crossed paths on stage.

Sandrine Piau and Véronique Gens have a longstanding rapport and dreamed of making a recording together. Here they pay tribute to two singers who, like them, were born within a year of each other, Mme Dugazon (1755-1821) and Mme Saint-Huberty (1756-1812): both enjoyed triumphant careers in Paris, inspiring numerous librettists and composers. Gluck even nicknamed Saint-Huberty ‘Madamela- Ressource’, while ‘a Dugazon’ became a generic name for the roles of naïve girls in love, and later of comical mothers. Rivals? They very likely were, given the quarrelsome spirit of the operatic world of the time, even if they never crossed paths on stage.

Sandrine Piau and Véronique Gens have a longstanding rapport and dreamed of making a recording together. Here they pay tribute to two singers who, like them, were born within a year of each other, Mme Dugazon (1755-1821) and Mme Saint-Huberty (1756-1812): both enjoyed triumphant careers in Paris, inspiring numerous librettists and composers. Gluck even nicknamed Saint-Huberty ‘Madamela- Ressource’, while ‘a Dugazon’ became a generic name for the roles of naïve girls in love, and later of comical mothers. Rivals? They very likely were, given the quarrelsome spirit of the operatic world of the time, even if they never crossed paths on stage.

Known as the ‘First Lady of the organ’, Marie-Claire Alain was a strikingly mature, creative and intuitive artist. Spanning four centuries of music, from Baroque masterpieces by the likes of Couperin and Grigny, through cornerstones of the French organ repertoire by Widor, Vierne and Messiaen, to two discs of works by her brother Jehan, this collection is testament to her vast and impressively wide-ranging recording legacy.