Label Alpha

Alpha Ralpha were a short-lived band with Michel Mareska on electric guitar, Claude Alvarez-Peryre on electric and acoustic guitars, Jean Alain Gardet on keyboards, Charlie Charriras on bass and Emmanuel Lacordaire on percussion. On their only album, four more musicians appeared: Francois Breant on piano and synth, Jean de Anthony and Claude Samard on guitars, and Jean-Jaques Goldman on vocals. Alvarez-Peryre, a co-founder of the group was a member of Malicorne, while Gardet and Goldman were the members of Tai Phong. The band released only one album, the self-titled LP released for Warner in Canada and France in 1977. Their music could be described as a mixture of jazz rock and French symphonic, where guitars are keyboards are carrying the melodies for the most part, with occasional usage of vibraphone and marimba, and vocal harmonies.

With the rise of Romanticism, the topics of opera changed from the mythological fantasy of Baroque operas to the fairytale fantasy which graced the French stage long before Romanticism reached other European nations. Initiated by the Palazzetto Bru Zane, this project is built like a universal fairytale, inspired by Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard, and others, as set to music by French composers of the Romantic period, alternating between famous composers such as Offenbach and Rossini and little known masters like Viardot, Silver, and Isouard. This imaginary opera was conceived and transcribed by Alexandre Dratwicki for piano quartet and two singers- a soprano and a mezzo, the roles of which are performed here by Jodie Devos and Caroline Meng.

Jean-Marie Leclair, a pure product of the 18th century, was at the crossroads of styles, cultivating a virtuosic art combining melodies à la française and Italian virtuosity stemming from Corelli and Vivaldi. He was 49 when he undertook his first (and only) lyric tragedy: Scylla et Glaucus. In the greatest French tradition, this work combines sumptuous numbers of sentimental outpourings with frightening scenes of fury and terror, in which the orchestra, with forceful passages, plays a dazzling role.

After its first two recordings, devoted to Schubert then Beethoven, highly praised and recommended by the critics, this eclectic, innovative quartet is now celebrating its tenth anniversary by tackling the string quintets of Mozart and Brahms. These two scores, representative of the culmination of a career in the case of Brahms and, for Mozart, the end of a life, are sustained by vigorous inspiration and frothing energy.