Allas Sings Arias From Verdi Operas Callas Remastered Maria Callas, Nicola Rescigno, Orchestre de la Société Des Concerts du Conservatoire, Orchestre du Théâtre National de L'opéra de Paris

One of French pop's most poetic songwriters, Georges Brassens was also a highly acclaimed and much-beloved performer in his own right. Not only a brilliant manipulator of language and a feted poet in his own right, Brassens was also renowned for his subversive streak, satirizing religion, class, social conformity, and moral hypocrisy with a wicked glee. Yet beneath that surface was a compassionate concern for his fellow man, particularly the disadvantaged and desperate. His personal politics were forged during the Nazi occupation, and while his views on freedom bordered on anarchism, his songs expressed those convictions more subtly than those of his contemporary, Léo Ferré. Though he was a skilled songwriter, Brassens had little formal musical training, and he generally kept things uncomplicated – simple melodies and spare accompaniment from a bass and second guitar. Along with Jacques Brel, he became one of the most unique voices on the French cabaret circuit, and exerted a tremendous influence on many other singers and songwriters of the postwar era.

The classical decoder! Clément Lebrun is a born pedagogue: in just a few words, this inspired all-rounder makes the greatest works of classical music accessible… In this programme intended for all ears, he tells the story of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, movement by movement, with the enthusiastic participation of the Orchestre de Paris (conducted by Fabien Gabel), which is also heard performing the work in its entirety under the direction of Simone Young. Just listen to the Fourth and you too will love Brahms…

A wonderfully and sensitively curated recital of piano music with light and darkness, or night and day as the central theme. Water, fantastical dreams and visions also inhabit the world conjured by Maria Martinova from the music of Debussy, Ravel and the contemporary Swiss composer Gregorio Zanon, who’s two movement work gives this album its title. Martinova’s pianism is by turn dazzling, tender and dramatic as she interprets the vivid sound world of these composers.

Here are the Oriental Turqueries galantes of the Opera Comique, where the lovers are captured by Corsairs and held as prisoners: the Harem for the Belle and the galleys for her knight… These enslaved Christians captivated the artistic imagination, which mixed the Thousand and One Nights and slave traders in amorous intrigues where the Sultan is deceived in his Seraglio!

The title of this album can be understood in different ways and lends itself to wordplay. Entertainment comes first, according to the literal translation of the Spanish diversión. And indeed, the works are at least partly intended to be light-hearted and relaxed. Nevertheless, the lightness of the French composer Olivier Penard's music is almost illusory or merely a detour, because behind a diverse language there is music of serious, sometimes tragic expressivity, carried by an intense dramaturgy. As in the "Concert Argentin" with tango, jazz and milonga, but with the tragic life of Eva Perón at its center.

Au nom des rois is the fifth studio album by French pop singer Jeanne Mas, released in 1992.

Au nom des rois is the fifth studio album by French pop singer Jeanne Mas, released in 1992.

This new OSR recording presents the two most ambitious musical responses to Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 epoch-making play Pelléas et Mélisande.

Audiophile reissues presenting the best efforts of post-World War II sound engineers have also in several cases preserved performances that would simply be hard to improve upon. RCA's Living Stereo series has revivified several top-notch albums, and now comes this 1961 recording of Falla's The Three-Cornered Hat with Ernest Ansermet conducting l'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the soprano passages from Teresa Berganza.