Barber Gauvin

This much-awaited recording, where Canadian singers Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Karina Gauvin perform some of the most beautiful arias composed by Handel showcases outstanding and conniving talent. This project was born from a collaboration with Alan Curtis and his Complesso Barocco, one of the most famous and renowned ensembles in the baroque music field. The 15 arias, performed in solo or in duet, are jewels from 9 oratorios that use material from the Bible and provide a large overview of Handel's genius to depict each emotion, from tenderness to fury.

This new CD of Les Boréades de Montréal, features acclaimed Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin in two French Baroque Cantatas: Orphée by Nicolas Clérambault and L'Hyver by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier. The recording is completed by two instrumental pieces: the lively suite from the opera Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse by Boismortier and by Michel Corrette's Concerto comique no 25 Les Sauvages.

Fête Galante, a 1999 release featuring soprano Karina Gauvin and pianist Marc-André Hamelin, won numerous awards, and the outstanding performances on this 2011 reissue confirm how well-deserved those honors were. Gauvin has an exceptional voice – clarion-bright, warm, confident, and agile, with a variegated palette of colors – and her effortlessly incisive interpretive skills give depth and life to everything she sings. The distinctiveness and character she brings to these songs show a terrific grasp of the genre of the mélodie, from the late 19th century songs by Fauré and the young Debussy to the mid-20th works by Poulenc, Honegger, and Émile Vuillermoz.

Karina Gauvin…is comfortably able to get the better of Vivaldi's coloratura, athletic intervals and ornaments….Gauvin offers…[an] affecting performance of two motets, one of them, 'Sum in medio tempestatum' a real rarity in performance.

With her enchanting voice, profound musicality and extraordinary vocal range, the Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin has been seducing audiences and critics around the world. Following the immense success of her CD Handel Arias, she returns with a new recording of arias, most never recorded, from the operas of Nicola Porpora (1686-1768).

An album of Mozart overtures, operatic and concert arias, from Die Zauberflote and Le Nozze di Figaro, amongst others. Soprano Karina Gauvin's recordings on ATMA and other labels and other other discs have won numerous prizes, including a Juno, a Felix and several Opus prizes and Grammy nominations. Bernard Labadie founded Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Quebec in 1984 and 1985 respectively, and continues to direct their regular seasons in Quebec City and Montreal and on tours worldwide.

Nuits blanches (White Nights) is a much anticipated new recording by soprano Karina Gauvin, who stylishly animates the opera heroines of the 18th century Russian court. Musical life during the reign of Tsar Peter the Great was a rich blend of diverse styles and influences originating from all over Europe. The Tsar was known for his love of music, a tradition that was carried on by his successors, the Empresses Anne, Elizabeth, and Catherine II, who cultivated cosmopolitan tastes for all kinds of music, including opera.

The Notenbuchlein (or “Little Music Book”) for Anna Magdalena Bach is one of the most affectionate and tangible means by which we can glimpse an aspect of the Bach family ‘off duty’, so-to-speak. Bach began this anthology devoted mainly to the keyboard for his second wife in 1722, having three years earlier done the same for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Musically speaking, the most important contents are five suites which, with some additional material and a sixth suite, were to become the French Suites (BWV812-7). But it is the remaining pieces which convey such warm intimacy to us, looking, as it were, through the window.