Swimming Philippe Rombi

In this music, all is dialogue, mingled avowals and passions, on the threshold of the opera house. All Mozart’s forms are nurtured by the same source, that of vocal melody. “I like an aria to be as precisely tailored to a singer as a well-cut suit,” he declared when he composed an aria. And what an aria this one is. The keyboard enters into dialogue with the soloist.

We have just discovered a new shining star in the bright Progressive rock universe, a comet named Philippe Luttun, whose forthoming arrival should make a deep impact ! This amazing French multi-instrumentalist offers today a cinematic concept-album inspired by Chernobyl's nuclear disaster that happened April 26th 1986, from its causes to its most terrific consequences. This is not for all audiences! Published in the year 2014 on the Musea Parallèle label, "The Taste Of Wormwood - Voices From Chernobyl" displays eight grandiose tracks, entirely performed by Philippe Luttun, only helped by a female singer here and there. One could be reminded of Pink Floyd, Clearlight, Porcupine Tree, Liquid Tension Experiment or Pulsar, these influences being perfectly assimilated and remixed, often completed by slavic (the action takes place in the U.S.S.R.) or electro touches…

The New French Connection: intimate musical tête-à-tête in a class of its own. Melody Gardot and acclaimed pianist Philippe Powell have recorded an intimate album of brooding jazz torch songs. Recorded in Paris in Dec 2021, this intimate new album showcases Melody and Philippes love of traditional jazz, taking the listener back to its golden age.

Christina Raphaëlle Haldane is thrilled to present Tu me voyais, her first record on Leaf Music set to be released on October 21, 2022. Tu me voyais is the result of the collaboration between Christina Raphaëlle Haldane and Carl Philippe Gionet, along with several other artists, writers, and composers who have contributed their own offerings. This album is anchored around Gionet’s new arrangements of Twelve Acadian Folk Songs, tailored for Haldane’s voice. These re-imaginings are set in the 19th century lieder aesthetic or art song where voice and piano play equal solo parts within the musical architecture.

For his latest ATMA Classique recording, horn player Louis-Philippe Marsolais has chosen a selection of chamber music by Clara and Robert Schumann composed for various instruments, some of which have been transcribed for horn. He is joined by pianists Philip Chiu and David Jalbert, and cellists Stéphane Tétreault and Cameron Crozman.

Beethoven composed the oratorio Christus am Ölberge (C hrist on the Mount of Olives ) in just ‘a fortnight, amid all sorts of tumult and other unpleasant and alarming events in my life’. It marked the first time since the two ‘imperial cantatas’ of 1790, the Cantata on the Death of the Emperor Joseph II WoO 87 and the Cantata on the Accession of Leopold II WoO 88, that he had embarked on a multi-movement vocal work. Christus am Ölberge was also Beethoven’s first composition on a religious subject and was destined to remain his only oratorio.

Philippe Herreweghe, respected elder of the early choral music world, directs a pared-down version of his choir Collegium Vocale Gent in delectably careful performances of music that in less careful hands can sound plain crazy. The slippery harmonies of Carlo Gesualdo’s sixth book of madrigals, written in 1611 but sounding centuries ahead of their time, are nailed down with the sharpest, slenderest of pins thanks to the perfect tuning and clear tone of Herreweghe’s ensemble. One to each line, the singers maintain a finely balanced blend, emerging briefly as soloists at moments of emphasis. Some may find the ambience a bit churchified for these texts, in which images of frolicking cupids are heavily outweighed by the laments of unbedded lovers miserably invoking death; but the performances are full of subtle nuance, and you’re unlikely to hear passages such as the end of Io Pur Respiro, with its sliding, viscous harmonies, better done.

Arthaus presents the Vienna State Opera’s outstandingly cast new production of Werther on DVD. The production was the Vienna State Opera debut for the young Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan – the Argentinian tenor Marcelo Álvarez, took the title role. Although he had already secured an international reputation through his performances in leading opera houses all over the world, this was his first appearance in the premiere of a production in Vienna. His Charlotte, on this occasion the young Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča, joined the Vienna State Opera in 2003.