Berg et Beck Robert Bober

Une intégrale de la musique pour guitare de Robert de Visée, par le guitariste canadien David Jacques, spécialiste en musique ancienne, sur une guitare cinq chœurs Claude Guibord, d’après un model Stradivarius de 1700.

Toutes les civilisations se croient invulnérables.
Maître du thriller historique, l'auteur de Fatherland revient avec un roman qui interroge la marche de l'Histoire, du Progrès et de la Science sous un angle d'une rare noirceur. Une expérience de lecture captivante qui nous rappelle la fragilité de notre monde moderne. …

Jakub Jan Ryba's Czech Christmas Mass, the composer's most famous work, has a kind of local cultural significance analogous to the importance of Handel's Messiah in English-speaking countries. Ryba, born between Mozart and Beethoven, uses the language of the late Classical era, and his Mass has an entirely unpretentious folk-like quality and directness. Ryba's music and his orchestrations in particular, are full of wit and fresh inventiveness, but he seems innocent of melodic or harmonic complexity. The effect, though, is not predictably simplistic, but charmingly rustic and emotionally transparent. The performers here, while clearly artists of the utmost sophistication, have just the right unmannered approach for the music, and it comes off beautifully.

The first point to note is how much more comprehensive this is than previous cycles, even the outstanding RCA set of period performances from Roy Goodman and the Hanover Band. Gardiner offers both versions of Symphony No 4, 1841 and 1851, and his performances of them are very well geared to bringing out the contrasts.