Charles Xii

This long-deleted Essential Classics reissue (available again courtesy of Arkivmusic.com’s on-demand reprint program) comprises the first CD remastering of two separate Bach piano releases. One disc features Rosalyn Tureck’s Bach Album, an early-1981 digital production made up mostly of short pieces, plus the Aria and Variations in Italian Style. The close-up yet warm sonics capture the full measure of Tureck’s technical specificity, subtle use of color, and micromanaged dynamics. Notice her absolute linear control in the F minor suite’s Prelude (first sound clip), or how her seemingly over-detached articulations (the seventh Italian variation) always maintain a lilting presence.

Jean Bourdichon was the court painter to four successive French kings including Louis XII and his predecessor, Charles VIII. Bourdichon painted the Hours of Louis XII for the king of France around the time of Louis’s coronation in 1498. Published on the occasion of an exhibition held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, October 18, 2005, to January 8, 2006, and at the Victoria and Albert Museum, February 2 to May 1, 2006, A Masterpiece Reconstructed reproduces the book’s sixteen known miniatures together with a selection of other books illuminated by the artist, by his teacher Jean Fouquet, and by their contemporaries. …

Époux d'Anne de Bretagne, contemporain de César Borgia, Louis XII (1498-1515) a laissé, durant tout l'Ancien Régime, le souvenir d'un bon roi, avant d'être progressivement oublié. Didier Le Fur redonne au souverain le lustre qu'il mérite dans Louis XII, un autre César. L'ouvrage n'est pas une simple biographie mais une réflexion sur le personnage royal. Une première partie événementielle est consacrée au récit rigoureux de la vie du capétien, tandis que la seconde partie décode la propagande déployée tout au long du règne afin de mettre en valeur l'image d'un roi idéal. …

Honoré du titre de " Père du peuple " par ses sujets, hissé par les hommes des Lumières sur le même piédestal qu'Henri IV, Louis XII perdra tout son prestige au XIXe siècle sous la plume méprisante de Michelet, et son souvenir ne s'en relèvera pas; la mémoire collective et les historiens finiront même presque par l'oublier, en dépit de la durée relativement longue de son règne (1498-1515)…

Diogenio Bigaglia, a composer who at present is unknown to most people, was active in Venice in the first half of the eighteenth century, so he was a contemporary of the much better known Tomaso Albinoni, Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello, and, above all, Antonio Vivaldi, whose work shows several evident – and more or less explicit – references to Bigaglia’s production. So he turns out to be a composer who is worthy of interest not only for the intrinsic musical worth of his works, but also for the influence his activity may have had on musicians with whom we are more familiar; this is why musicologists have recently started showing an increasing interest in him.