Didier Talpain

Mathilde von Guise was one of Hummel’s best known operas, partly because the composer actually issued a printed piano score which was published in Leipzig in 1823. It was written for Vienna where it was premiered, in German, at the Kartnertortheater. As was the case with all German lyric drama at the time, it was in the form of a singspiel: with spoken dialogue. Hummel decided to perform the work again in 1821 at the Court Theatre in Weimar where he was working and made some minor revisions to the piece, along with changing the overture.

An admirer of Mozart and a great reformer of music education at the recently opened Paris Conservatoire (1795), Charles-Simon Catel composed in 1810 Les Bayadères, an operatic masterpiece set in India, which competed successfully with Spontini’s La Vestale, which was then at the height of its popularity. Tinged with orientalism, it turns the page on Classicism and uses new musical and dramatic structures to create emotion. In a work full of action and excitement, the heroine of the opera, the bayadère Laméa – a ‘star’ role (then a new concept) – shows remarkable presence. On his arrival in Paris in the 1820s, the young and very discerning Hector Berlioz was filled with enthusiasm by this work.

In the midst of the artistic debate between the German and Italian styles, as the Age of Enlightenment was lighting its final fires during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Johann Christian Bach was presenting his Amadis de Gaule to Paris. Reduced and revised from a libretto of Quinault for Lully, this operatic work is shot through from one end to the other with the first frissons of the awakening Romanticism.

This collection is the second volume in a series of Hummel piano concertos (after Vol.1, BC94338), bringing much-needed attention to one of the most respected composer-pianists of the 18th century.

This massive 30 CD compendium commemorates the tricentenary of C.P.E. Bach's birth. The Hamburg and Berlin Symphonies, the Württemberg Sonatas and the Magnificat are among the many works included in this set. The artists included, too numerous to mention, include Rinaldo Alessandrini, Raphael Wallfisch and Hartmut Haenchen.