Tombés Pour Daho

Noëlle Spieth (Solstice, record 1990-2003): the inescapable reference, with recordings that have matured over 13 years, thanks to a courageous independent label. Under the agile fingers of Noëlle Spieth, an incessant kaleidoscope of multicolored images unfolds, as the artist approaches Couperin as a painter. Never the enigmatic titles of each piece will have borne their names as well, real sketches on the spot, affectionate or ironic, without ever malice. The key word of Noëlle Spieth is movement and contrast. Alternately capable of brushing teeming storms, of approaching movements in the luthed style with emotion and modesty, the harpsichordist moves and surprises each note.

If what you want is a crackerjack coupling of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and his First Piano Concerto, this disc is the one to get. With the ardently noble 1971 Nathan Milstein recording of the Violin Concerto with Claudio Abbado conducting the Vienna Philharmonic joined to the recklessly passionate 1973 Martha Argerich recording of the Piano Concerto with Charles Dutoit conducting the Royal Philharmonic, both performances are easily as good as the very best ever recorded.

Prison Episodes, an opus five years in the making, is Pouya Pour-Amin's cry of anger and sorrow against our times. Structured as a series of sketches, this harrowing and powerful album explores the experiences of a political prisoner from her or his incarceration to breaking point.

Marguerite Long et les Pasquier dans le Quatuor op. 15 ? Trésor d'une discographie comparée, et centre d'un album résumant les années 1870 de Fauré. Nul de ses élèves, de ses contemporains et des lecteurs de son livre Au piano avec Gabriel Fauré ne devait l'ignorer : Marguerite Long (1874-1966) savait mieux que personne jouer la musique de son « ami », elle qui l'avait bue à la source. Si Fauré n'était pas pressé de distinguer un gardien du temple, elle s'installait à l'entrée avec autant de fierté batailleuse (mais pouvait-il en être autrement pour une musicienne dans le Paris des années 1900 ?), de petits arrangements avec le souvenir du compositeur (« ami » surtout de son mari le musicologue Joseph de Marliave, mort à la Grande Guerre) et de vanité (terribles interviews) que d'exigence perspicace, de fierté légitime et d'amour pour une musique qu'elle aura servie sans relâche. C'est d'ailleurs à quatre-vingts ans que la pianiste invite le Trio Pasquier à graver avec elle le Quatuor op. 15 !

Six ans après le premier, un nouveau lot de six concertos, où tarte à la crème du "divin Mozart" ne résiste pas aux assauts de solistes et d'orchestres allumés. Six raretés, par ailleurs.

In the Baroque period, there really was no such thing as an "orchestra" as we understand the term today. There were large collections of singers and players brought together for special occasions, but aside from those, an "orchestral" work was anything that required more than five or six players. Bach's harpsichord concertos, for example, can be performed by a couple of dozen string players plus the soloist, or with an accompaniment of one person per part, which is more or less what we get here. These small forces permit an unprecedented transparency of sound and sharpness of attack, even if some weight and body of tone necessarily get sacrificed. It's a perfectly legitimate way to play the music, however, and you won't find it better done than here.

Liszt's position as a composer for the Church has always been controversial. The paradox that the most modern composer of the age, the supporter of the revolutionary ideals of 1789, 1830 and 1848, ended up writing music for an institution regarded as a bastion of everything conservative and reactionary, has led to a questioning of Liszt's motives. With the rapidly advancing secularization of culture, Liszt was seen as disillusioned, and his decision to take minor orders in 1865 was considered a startling about-turn for one so worldly. In fact, Liszt wrote sacred music with reform in mind. The dismal state of church music in the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was common to hear opera cabalettas sung to liturgical words, encouraged him to go back to plainsong and the music of Palestrina for inspiration. Composed in 1865, the year he took minor orders, the Missa Choralis embodies these twin elements. The influence of plainsong pervades the thematic material, albeit refocused through Liszt's boldly original and expressively chromatic harmonic language.