Alpha Classics

Franz Schubert’s masterpiece, his song cycle Winterreise, was written shortly before his death in 1828, at the age of only 31. On his winter journey, the singer wanders as a lost soul in harsh terrain, wracked by conflicting emotions, but consoled by his memories of kinder times. Benjamin Appl commented: "Every time I perform it, Winterreise feels like a new and different journey, depending on my own mood, the atmosphere in the hall, and of course the shared creativity with the all-important pianist. For singers, Schubert’s wanderer is a lifetime companion, yet a daunting one as we confront all the great recordings and performances that are already out there. The challenge for every singer is not to be inhibited, but to find fresh ways of understanding and transmitting both words and music to their own generation". Somehow, in Winterreise, Schubert has made space for that potential. As Benjamin Britten said: “Every time I come back to it, I am amazed not only by the extraordinary mastery of it, but by the renewal of the magic. Each time, the mystery remains”.Winterreise is Benjamin Appl’s first release for Alpha Classics as part of a multi-album deal. In this recording he is joined by long-time collaborator and pianist James Baillieu.

The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Mikko Franck continue their collaboration with Alpha Classics and here invite the Maîtrise and Chœur de Radio France to join them in a Debussy programme. This recording couples La Damoiselle élue, a work described by the composer as a "little oratorio in a mystical and somewhat pagan vein", the Nocturnes for orchestra, composed between 1897 and 1899, and the Symphonic Fragments from Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien fashioned by André Caplet less than a year after the work’s first performance, and which ensured it would not be forgotten by posterity.

La Fondation Orpheum, qui soutient les jeunes musiciens depuis plus de trente ans, s’est associée à Alpha Classics pour une série d’enregistrements consacrés aux concertos de Mozart, tous instruments confondus. Les meilleurs solistes de la jeune génération ont été sélectionnés sous la direction artistique d‘Howard Griffiths, chef mozartien reconnu, qui considère que jouer sa musique, c’est comme « se regarder dans un miroir : on entend si tout est en place, musicalité, intonation, rythme, phrasé »… Ces albums immortaliseront ce test implacable et révéleront les grands virtuoses de demain.

Composer Guillaume Roussel has written the original music for the film Couleurs de l’incendie directed by and featuring Clovis Cornillac with co-stars Léa Drucker, Benoît Poelvoorde, Alice Isaaz and Olivier Gourmet. The film is based on the novel by Pierre Lemaitre, who received the Prix Goncourt for his book Au revoir là-haut. The movie adaptation of the latter by Albert Dupontel in 2017 (See You Up There) was a huge success and won several Césars. In Couleurs de l’Incendie, Fanny Ardant plays the role of a heroic opera singer; her singing voice in the film is that of the soprano Sandrine Piau. In addition to the music by Guillaume Roussel (who, among other things, wrote the soundtrack for Cédric Jimenez’s film Bac Nord), we hear Verdi, Saint-Saëns and other classics from the French repertoire, including Plaisir d’amour.

For the seventh volume in this collection devoted to Mozart by the younger generation of soloists, the award-winning Austrian pianist Aaron Pilsan records the concerto K.459 with the ORF Radio Symphonieorchester in Vienna. French horn player Nicolas Ramez records one of his favourite concertos, the first of Mozart's four horn concertos. Finally, the young flutist Diren Duran performs the Andante for flute and orchestra K.315 before accompanying the harpist Elisabeth Plank for the divine concerto for flute, harp and orchestra K.299.The Orpheum Foundation, which has been supporting young musicians for over thirty years, has teamed up with Alpha Classics for a series of recordings devoted to Mozart's concertos on all instruments. The best soloists of the younger generation have been selected under the artistic direction of Howard Griffiths, a renowned Mozart conductor who believes that playing his music is like "looking in a mirror: you hear whether everything is in place, musicality, intonation, rhythm, phrasing"…

La Fondation Orpheum, qui soutient les jeunes musiciens depuis plus de trente ans, s’est associée à Alpha Classics pour une série d’enregistrements consacrés aux concertos de Mozart, tous instruments confondus. Les meilleurs solistes de la jeune génération ont été sélectionnés sous la direction artistique d‘Howard Griffiths, chef mozartien reconnu, qui considère que jouer sa musique, c’est comme « se regarder dans un miroir : on entend si tout est en place, musicalité, intonation, rythme, phrasé »… Ces albums immortaliseront ce test implacable et révéleront les grands virtuoses de demain.

Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater has enjoyed enormous fame ever since the eighteenth century – Rousseau called its first movement "the most perfect and touching that has ever come from the pen of any composer". There were many arrangements of the work, by Bach or Hiller among others. It was performed more than eighty times at the Concert Spirituel in Paris between 1753 and 1790, in multiple versions, probably also with the participation of a choir.

For the sixth volume of this series devoted to Mozart performances by the young generation of soloists, the pianist Roman Borisov, who won First Prize at the Kissinger KlavierOlymp in 2022 when he was the youngest participant in the competition, has recorded the Concertos K413 and K415 with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. The French oboist Gabriel Pidoux, winner of the ‘Revelation’ award at the Victoires de la Musique Classique 2020, who recorded his first solo album for Alpha in 2022 (Romance, Alpha789), presents the famous Concerto K314, with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, conducted as always by Howard Griffiths.

Anthony Romaniuk, multi-keyboardist, alchemist of pianos, or ‘musical polyglot’ as some people call him, presents his new album as follows: ‘I remember very clearly the occasions in my childhood when I would be at a concert and a magical feeling would overtake both the audience and the performers. It was as though everyone in the room was part of the performance and we were all experiencing a kind of collective bliss. As an adult I have tried to understand this phenomenon of communal concentration. It seems to me that a certain kind of musical work will naturally induce this state, works in which the rhythm is hypnotic, trance-like and ongoing. For this album I wanted to find music embodying this quality, pieces in perpetual motion.’ As if in some fascinating portrait gallery, we meet music by Kapsberger, Scarlatti, Purcell, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Ravel, Satie, Ligeti, Adams, and improvisations, played on a Fazioli concert piano, a Graf fortepiano from 1835, a Flemish muselar, a seventeenth-century harpsichord, a Yamaha CP80 electro-acoustic piano and a Prophet Rev2 synthesiser.