Renards De La Banquise

The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is a Swiss symphony orchestra, based in Geneva at the Victoria Hall. In addition to symphony concerts, the OSR performs as the opera orchestra in productions at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

Roman accounts of the nobleman Kapsperger reveal a highly eccentric musician: a virtuoso theorbist, a singer, a successful composer, he was said to be arrogant, even irascible. A character straight out of a novel, as the musicians of L’Escadron Volant de la Reine present him in their first album on harmonia mundi, aided and abetted by a distinguished partner: on this colourful disc, the madrigals, villanellas and arias of ‘Il Tedeschino’ (The German) meet the literary fantasy of the writer Carl Norac.

The great “composer of the millennium” Johann Sebastian Bach stands like a solitary rock in the landscape of music history. There is less talk about where he came from and what influenced him stylistically. Chorwerk Ruhr embarked on a search for clues with highly interesting results: the young Johann Sebastian also listened to and studied works that were already around 100 years old. In any case, during his later years as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, he ensured that the collection of motets Florilegium selectissimarum Cantionum was purchased anew – it was used so frequently in lessons under his aegis that the music material was completely worn out. The collection by the early Baroque master and school cantor Erhard Bodenschatz, first published in 1603, illustrates the then new compositional technique of the Baroque in a clearly comprehensible way in songs mostly by German or Italian masters.

A partir des définitions classiques de l'oeuvre et des apports de la sociologie, l'auteur propose une série de réponses sur la nature et la fonction sociales des oeuvres d'art. Il analyse les travaux de recherche des dernières décennies sur le fonctionnement des institutions de l'art et de la culture. L'étude défend la thèse de l'égalité "sociale" de principe des objets d'art et de culture. …

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.

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.

1694: the first French opera composed by a woman is premiered at the Academie royale de musique. The fateful destiny of the Greek lovers, driven to blindness and horror by the gods: Cephalus will kill Procris, whom he believes to be unfaithful, and himself… A virtuoso harpsichordist much appreciated by Louis XIV, Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre chose to become a composer at a time when such freedom was virtually unheard of for a woman. Her gamble paid off, with six performances and the admiration of posterity: this flamboyant work has finally been brought back to the public by Reinoud van Mechelen.

Jérôme Lejeune continues his History of Music series with this boxed set devoted to the Renaissance. The next volume in the series after Flemish Polyphony (RIC 102), this set explores the music of the 16th century from Josquin Desprez to Roland de Lassus. After all of the various turnings that music took during the Middle Ages, the music of the Renaissance seems to be a first step towards a common European musical style. Josquin Desprez’s example was followed by every composer in every part of Europe and in every musical genre, including the Mass setting, the motet and all of the various new types of solo song. Instrumental music was also to develop considerably from the beginning of the 16th century onwards.