Les Hurlements D’leo il en Faudra Des Soleils

French art-rock unit Etron Fou Leloublan – roughly translated, "Mad Sh*t, the White Wolf" – was formed in 1974 by vocalist Eulalie Ruynat, bassist/vocalist Ferdinand Richard, saxophonist Chris Chanet, and drummer Guigou Chenevier. A product of the Rock in Opposition coalition – a loose collective of British and Western European artists, spearheaded by Henry Cow, that openly challenged the commercial, creative, and sociopolitical aims of mass-market popular music – Etron Fou Leloublan boasted a frenzied, densely rhythmic approach ably captured by their 1976 debut LP, Batelages…

A new aesthetic calls for new forms: such is the challenge the composer set for himself in the two works presented here. In Les Nuits d’été, Berlioz pioneered, well before Mahler and Ravel, a song cycle for voice and orchestra. In Harold in Italy, scored for large orchestra and solo viola, he experimented with the symphonic genre. These period-instrument performances by Les Siècles, led by François-Xavier Roth, with violist Tabea Zimmermann, also feature Stéphane Degout in the vocal cycle, heard here in the composer’s own version for baritone. File under: out of the ordinary.

This world première recording, with a first-rate cast, brings to light a major work of the French operatic heritage. Pyrrhus by Pancrace Royer (also noted for his very fine – and virtuosic – harpsichord music) was first performed early in the reign of Louis XV. It is one of the twenty-one tragédies lyriques on the subject of the Trojan War that were performed at the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opéra) between 1687 and 1730.

Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann is among those operas with most textual problems, since the composer did not live to its premiere, leaving an incomplete score. The traditional text, bringing in extra material, much of it unauthentic, and leaving out alot, was only established in the 20th century. This Dresden recording sessions were held (June 1987-June 1989) borrowed much from Michael Kaye's 1991 Schott Edition.