Les Snorky

Why has Pelléas et Mélisande taken its place as one of opera’s greatest masterpieces? Debussy deployed a unique style in this work, flexible and natural, never forcing the prosody of words and phrases. In this new historically informed interpretation, François-Xavier Roth has endeavoured to do justice to this music that is at once so strong and so delicate, seconded by a handpicked cast of today’s finest French singers.

Composed in 1771 to a libretto by Metastasio tracing the well-known biblical story of Judith and Holofernes, La Betulia liberata was Mozart’s first oratorio. Often described as a stroke of genius, this recording by Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset, with Sandrine Piau, Amanda Forsythe and Teresa Iervolino, shows the dramatic intensity of which he was already capable at the age of just fifteen and the influence of his early experiences with opera.

Les Brown And His Band Of Renown, led by saxophonist Les Brown, were a fixture on the US popular music and broadcasting landscape for more than half a century following its inception in 1938, and during a golden first fifteen years or so racked up 26 US pop hits, most famously introducing Doris Day to the chart scene as his featured singer during the 1940s.