Complete Early Music

Poulenc - Complete Chamber Music, Vol.1 - Alexandre Tharaud et al. (2000) {Naxos 8.553611}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 208 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 134 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 67 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2000 Naxos / HNH International | 8.553611
Classical / Early Modern / Early 20th Century / Chamber Music

This excellent first volume in what promises to be a two-disc collection of Poulenc's complete chamber music offers performances that compare favorably with the best available. All of the musicians are superb, but several deserve special mention. Alexandre Tharaud plays Poulenc's piano parts with great flair, wit, and a true feeling for the music's manic shifts from raucous high spirits to nostalgia and melancholy. Since all of these works feature the piano, the importance of his contribution can't be overestimated.

Poulenc - Complete Chamber Music, Vol.4 - Alexandre Tharaud et al. (2000) {Naxos 8.553614}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 215 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 141 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 97 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2000 Naxos / HNH International | 8.553614
Classical / Early Modern / Early 20th Century / Chamber Music

Naxos’ first-rate edition of Poulenc’s complete chamber music continues with this very fine collection of shorter pieces and song cycles for voice and small ensemble. Baritone Franck Leguérinel turns in a smashing performance of Le Bal masqué from its manic opening Air de bravoure to the hysterical falsetto antics in the closing Caprice. He’s equally fine in Le Bestiaire, but the cruel vocal line and harmonic acerbities of the Max Jacob songs prove less congenial, though he’s no less stylistically assured.

Poulenc - Complete Chamber Music, Vol.1 - Alexandre Tharaud et al. (2000) {Naxos 8.553611}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 208 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 134 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 67 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2000 Naxos / HNH International | 8.553611
Classical / Early Modern / Early 20th Century / Chamber Music

This excellent first volume in what promises to be a two-disc collection of Poulenc's complete chamber music offers performances that compare favorably with the best available. All of the musicians are superb, but several deserve special mention. Alexandre Tharaud plays Poulenc's piano parts with great flair, wit, and a true feeling for the music's manic shifts from raucous high spirits to nostalgia and melancholy. Since all of these works feature the piano, the importance of his contribution can't be overestimated.

Poulenc - Complete Chamber Music, Vol.2 - Alexandre Tharaud et al. (2000) {Naxos 8.553612}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 205 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 132 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 60 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2000 Naxos / HNH International | 8.553612
Classical / Early Modern / Early 20th Century / Chamber Music

Francis Poulenc reportedly felt uncomfortable writing for piano and strings and had harsh things to say about both the violin and cello sonatas, remarks duly parroted by critics and biographers ever since. And yet the fact remains that they are his most ambitious, lengthiest, and emotionally complex chamber works. As so often happens in these circumstances, it’s much easier to regurgitate received opinion than it is to actually listen to the music and take it on its own terms.

Poulenc - Complete Chamber Music, Vol.3 - Alexandre Tharaud et al. (2000) {Naxos 8.553613}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 194 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 145 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 67 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2000 Naxos / HNH International | 8.553613
Classical / Early Modern / Early 20th Century / Chamber Music

Naxos' triumphant march through Poulenc's complete chamber music continues with this latest release containing, among a host of smaller items, a smashing performance of the magnificent Sonata for Two Pianos, one of the composer's greatest large works in any medium. Alexandre Tharaud and Francis Chaplin play beautifully…hypnotically seductive in the slow introduction and third movement, while the faster music has the right rhythmic skittishness and crisp articulation. The other outstanding performance here is the Sonata for horn, trumpet, and trombone. This awkward but charming piece has seldom sounded better balanced and more natural (not to mention in tune), and it's very well recorded in a warm acoustic. The other pieces are trifles, but no less enjoyable for that. Another winner.

Poulenc - Complete Chamber Music, Vol.5 - Alexandre Tharaud et al. (2000) {Naxos 8.553615}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 256 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 172 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 70 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2000 Naxos / HNH International | 8.553615
Classical / Early Modern / Early 20th Century / Chamber Music

The narrators are two gifted children, the pianist Alezandre Tharaud, whose acute playing has sparked the series. Set for narrator and small ensemble and originally improvised to please the composer's three-year old cousin, the tale of Babar the Elephant receives a charming performance from Alexandre Tharaud and friends with child narrators on this fifth instalment of Naxos's chamber-music series.

This collection of the complete chamber music of Poulenc shows the varying styles that he employed. From the jazzy, bitonal passages of the Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon and the Sonata for Horn, Trumpet and Trombone which has been described as 'Pergolesi with his wig awry' (Roger Nichols, Grove) to the profound beauty of his last three sonatas for wind. All are extremely accessible. The Nash Ensemble gave a series of concerts of Poulenc's music at the Wigmore Hall earlier this year to great critical acclaim and Hyperion are delighted to be able to present this wonderful collection on this, Poulenc's centenary year.

SEON (Studio Erichson) is a period music label by the legendary producer Wolf Erichson. Erichson founded the label in 1969 as one of the first labels dedicated only to authentic music. The recordings were made with the best available recording techniques of the time and still deliver a high quality product in line with today's standards. This special boxset offers all SEON CD reissues from the late 90s on 85 CDs in a limited edition boxset.

The music of William Byrd has been something of an obsession for the members of Phantasm, featuring on their early recordings Still Music of the Spheres (1996) and Byrd Song (1998), as well as their 2004 collection The Four Temperaments. Here they return again to the Elizabethan composer with the benefit of nearly two decades’ performing experience, to gather together his complete output for viol consort, bar the fragmentary or spurious works. Spanning some 40 years of Byrd’s life, this is a condense but subtly varied album of styles: courtly dances interleave with cryptic spiritual and devotional works – fleeting expressions of the recusant Catholic’s unwavering faith – and variations on popular Tudor songs, like the magnificent tour de force, Browning. Among the finest works are the Fantasias, which range from lush-textured six-part tapestries to the laconic three-part pieces, haiku-like in their poetic expressivity. Throughout them Byrd retains the ‘Angelicall and Divine’ qualities that his contemporaries remarked upon – qualities that Phantasm captures perfectly in this collection.