Hélène Sio J'veux Tout Savoir

Fitting her reputation for interpreting the keyboard repertoire in a big way, Hélène Grimaud presents her first recording of J.S. Bach's works with transcriptions by Ferruccio Busoni, Franz Liszt, and Sergei Rachmaninov, which were all intended to update the music for the modern grand piano. Because Grimaud's style is direct and robust, reminiscent of Martha Argerich, and the transcriptions are dramatically more pianistic than the originals, Bach purists should look elsewhere for more meticulous and historically informed performances of these Baroque pieces, perhaps on fortepiano or harpsichord.

Passing from ’Credo’, the title of her first DG recital, to ‘Reflection’, Hélène Grimaud presents us with a second lovingly themed gift, this time mirroring the entwined love of Robert and Clara Schumann and their adored protégé, Johannes Brahms. Sumptuously presented (there are 13 photographs of the pianist) and recorded, few tributes could be more committed.

The essence of Camille Saint-Saëns' music comes through perhaps most clearly in his music for solo instrument and orchestra, which exemplifies his elegant combination of melody and conservatory-generated virtuosity. The two cello concertos are here, plus a pair of crowd-pleasing short works for piano and orchestra, and the evergreen Carnival of the Animals, with pianists Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier joining forces along with a collection of instruments that includes the often-omitted glass harmonica. There are all kinds of attractions here: the gently humorous and not over-broad Carnival, the songful cello playing of Truls Mørk, and the little-known piano-and-orchestra scene Africa, Op. 89, with its lightly Tunisian flavor (sample this final track). But really, the central thread connecting them all is the conducting of Neeme Järvi and the light, graceful work of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; French music is the nearly 80-year-old Järvi's most congenial environment, and in this recording, perhaps his last devoted to Saint-Saëns, he has never been better.

This Concert Parisien, subtitled "from the era of Louis XV," is something more specific still: it offers music more or less closely connected with the circle of Alexandre La Riche de La Pouplinière (oddly spelled "Poplinière" here), a music patron whose suburban home was a major incubator of music by Rameau and the generation that followed him. The music on this disc is not brainy, experimental Rameau, or the smooth chamber music of the Concerts Spirituels; rather, it's progressive, allied in spirit to the literary salons that Pierre Jaquier in his concise booklet notes called "temples of wit," and, above all, fun.

Nile Rodgers Presents - The Chic Organization - Boxset Vol. 1 / "Savoir Faire" (2010) {4CD Warner 5249827895 rec 1977-1983}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.85 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 651 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 177 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1977-83, 2010 Atlantic / Wea / Warner / Rhino | 5249827895
Funk / Dance Pop / Soul / Post Disco

In 1976, Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards founded the legendary CHIC Organization Ltd. Together they wrote and produced many number one hits and very quickly became the biggest hit music factory since Motown. A few years after the dawn of Disco, Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards disbanded The Chic Organization Ltd., but they kept on playing & producing, with Nile Rodgers quickly becoming the biggest pop producer of the 80’s. In 1983, he produced David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” and in 1984, Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”. Many more artists also benefited from his incredible production skills and unique guitar style, including Mick Jagger, INXS, Duran Duran, Eric Clapton, Hall & Oates, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, Michael Jackson, Grace Jones…to name but a few.

French beatmakers and reggae-heads L’Entourloop is back with a brand-new set following their stunning debut album Chickens in Your Town released two years ago.
The overall recipe this time is the same - mixing reggae and dancehall with boom rap. They have cultivated a unique, bass-boosted and urban sound using musical textures from a broad variety of genres.

Staged and costumed by Laurent Pelly, with sets by Chantal Thomas and choreography by Laura Scozzi, this production of La Belle Hélène never forgets for one moment that Offenbach’s parody of the origins of the Trojan war -clearly recognisable in his day as a satire on the moral laxity of Second Empire high society- is, above all, a supreme manifestion of his comic genius. From start to finish it combines a musically superb performance with a stream of visual humour that flows from Pelly’s core idea that the action all takes place in the imagination of a sleeping, sex-starved, suburban housewife. Dame Felicity Lott is magnificent as the woman who gets into bed beside her somnolent old husband and dreams of being the most beautiful woman in the world, entangled in amorous adventures with the virile young Paris, tastily portrayed by Yann Beuron. And just as dreams do not respect the normal limitations of logic, time and place, so her nighttime fantasies combine the everyday with the mythical, and muddle up Greece, ancient and modern.

Harmonia Mundi's release features four secular cantatas and a trio sonata Handel wrote during his sojourn in Italy during his early twenties. The cantatas range from the mini-opera Il duello amoroso or Amarilli vezzosa, which depicts a shepherd's vain courting of a resisting nymph, to solo works in which a narrator describes similar pastoral stories, most of which also end in rejection. In Il duello amoroso, soprano Hélène Guilmette joins countertenor Andreas Scholl, and their charming banter leaves the listener saddened that the shepherd's suit was so dismally unsuccessful.