Godard

Renaissance ensemble Capella de la Torre on the one side, tuba player and composer Michel Godard and pianist Markus Becker on the other, combine jazz with the alien distance of the renaissance instruments by letting the past and the present meet and collide. They give worlds of differing memories a new form and let the heterogeneous become something new and homogenous.

Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), made at the height of the French New Wave, remains a milestone in French cinema.

A composition student of Napoleon-Henri Reber and a violin student of Henri Vieuxtemps, Benjamin Godard received a thorough education before beginning his teaching career at the Paris Conservatory in 1887. Although much of Godard’s works are forgotten, possibly due to his untimely death, his symphonic works featured here show an original outlook on the genre, fusing together melodic qualities with technical brilliance. This release features his Symphonie no. 2 op. 57, his Trois Morceaux op. 51, and his Symphonie gothique op. 23 performed by the Munchner Rundfunkorchester, conducted by David Reiland.

Dante Alighieri, born in Florence in 1265, was at once a poet and an important political figure of his time. His celebrated Divine Comedy relates his supposed descent to Hell and slow ascent to Paradise. Godard’s operatic treatment of his life (1890) skilfully juxtaposes the political milieu – crowd scenes in Florence and the quarrel between Guelfs and Ghibellines – with the expression of the courtly love he feels for Beatrice, betrothed to his friend Bardi. The most remarkable element of the opera is the integration of a ‘Vision’ that is nothing less than a synthesis of the Divine Comedy set to music. Its third act is built around a fantasy ‘Hell’ and ‘Paradise’, featuring an Apparition of Virgil, Chorus of the Damned, Infernal Whirlwind, Divine Radiance and Apotheosis of Beatrice. Godard is here at the peak of his melodic inspiration and compositional mastery, in a style that brings Gounod up to date and need not fear comparison with Massenet.