Alain Héril

Again evoking his time as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, Canadian pianist Alain Lefèvre releases a second album of French music. Paris Memories, which follows My Paris Years, comprises music by Franck, Debussy and the man who taught Alain Lefèvre composition: Pierre Max Dubois. A pupil of the prolific and multi-faceted Darius Milhaud, Dubois (1930-1995) wrote music that is full of spirit and wit. Paris Memories culminates in a four-movement piano sonata by Dubois, composed in 1984 and dedicated to none other than Alain Lefèvre. “While a student at the Paris Conservatoire I had memorable encounters with great figures in the world of music,” says the pianist. “Of particular significance was the opportunity to get to know my teacher Pierre Max Dubois, and I’m profoundly moved to have finally been able to record his piano sonata.”

Though based in multiple musical realms, pianist Alain Mallet's ambitious Mutt Slang projects coalesce into a world that exudes 'exotic' yet ultimately feels familiar, the roots of its various components meeting somewhere deep within. Sharing the musical landscape with young musicians from Palestine, Brazil, Italy, Israel, Japan, Bulgaria, Panama, Ireland, Puerto Rico and the US, the complexity of their backgrounds - musically, ethnically, and otherwise, permeates the session, suffusing Mallet's compositions with an undeniable energy and life. "Mutt Slang is very much the result of this convergence of all the musics I love, of digging to get to their shared soul and rebuild something fresh, in order to discover where I belong and give others a chance to do the same." - Alain Mallet

World-renowned tenor Roberto Alagna stars in the most passionate of French operas, conveying the young poet’s journey from naïve hope to the agony of the much-loved aria ‘Pourquoi me réveiller?’ and the shattering final tragedy.
Massenet’s glorious opera, based on a novel by Goethe, is regularly performed all over the world and its central role is one in which Roberto Alagna has been celebrated for more than a decade. The role of Werther’s beloved Charlotte is sung by American mezzo Kate Aldrich (an acclaimed Carmen at ‘The Met’), who has sung the role to critical acclaim in Europe and Japan. Filmed live at the Teatro Regio in Turin, the powerful stage production is the work of another member of the Alagna family – the tenor’s younger brother, David.

A lyric tragedy in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti, libretto by Salvatore Cammarano. Roberto Devereux was composed in the summer of 1837, the year, according to biographers, in which Donizetti seems to have suffered most, having lost his third son and his adored wife Virginia Vasselli. The opera made its debut at the San Carlo Theatre in Naples on October 28th in the same year and was a great success. The rehearsals of the original performance were postponed for a month due to censorship of the decapitation scene of the leading actor.

This compilation in Verve's laudable Jazz in Paris reissue series features two separate soundtracks of original music. The first features a dozen works by French saxophonist Barney Wilen, written for Edouard Molinaro's Un Témoin dans la Ville, with a quintet consisting of Kenny Dorham, Duke Jordan, Kenny Clarke, and bassist Paul Rovere. While many of the pieces were only heard as musical fragments in the film, and several of them are little more than a brief chorus or two in recorded form, the music doesn't need visuals to be effective. Best is Wilen's sole appearance on soprano sax, the mellow duo ballad with Jordan of "Mélodie pour les Radio-Taxis." None of the tunes is particularly memorable, though the music is certainly enjoyable…

This recording marks the beginning of the collaboration between the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and its new music director, the French conductor Alain Altinoglu, who conducts the leading European and American orchestras and has made a reputation for himself in every repertory – not forgetting opera at Salzburg, Bayreuth, and La Monnaie in Brussels, where he is music director. Their first disc pays tribute to a composer whose bicentenary is celebrated in 2022, César Franck, with the famous Symphony in D minor and two less well-known works, presented in new editions: the symphonic poem Le Chasseur maudit (1882) and the large-scale symphonic interlude from the oratorio Rédemption, composed in 1872 after the Paris Commune, performed here in its first version, long considered lost.