The poetic renewal embodied by Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine and so many others after them radically changed the musical landscape and propelled French art song into a true golden age. This tribute to Fauré, the supreme master of the mélodie, gains its radiance from Marc Mauillon’s ideally clear voice and Anne Le Bozec’s delicate pianism. The singer’s second ‘solo’ recording on harmonia mundi shows him just as much at home in Faurean word setting as in the text of Lambert’s Leçons de Ténèbres.
Françoise Hardy is a pop and fashion icon celebrated as a French national treasure. With her signature breathy alto, she was one of the earliest and most definitive French participants in the yé-yé movement (a style of pop music that initially emerged from Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal before spreading to France in the early 1960s). She is one of only a few female vocalists who could or would write and perform her own material. She offered a startling contrast to the boy's club of French pop in the early '60s, paving the way for literally thousands of women all over the globe.
Acte Préalable continues its exploration of little-known and, up to now, unheard Polish repertoire. Their rapidly-growing catalogue contains some of the better-known Poles - Chopin being an obvious example - as well as a smattering of releases of Bartók and Beethoven. However, with the apparent embarrassment of musical riches to be found in Poland, they have chosen to stick with a continuing string of world-premiere recordings of Polish composers both new and old. Here we have what might be the final instalment of Lessel’s chamber music. Much was considered lost, and his first string quartet only one complete movement has survived was a rather recent discovery.
Emmanuel Pahud is an award-winning classical flutist who's also Principal Flute for the Berlin Philharmonic. Jacky Terrasson is an award-winning jazz pianist who's a Principal Original on the scene; uniquely playful and inventive, it's always interesting to see what he comes up with next. This time he rearranges 14 classical melodies in a jazz context.
Before I start to write the review of Emma Eames complete victor recordings, I would like to say few words about her biography. Emma Eames(1865-1952) a native from Bath, Maine, made her debut on March 13, 1889 at the Paris Opera as Juliette in Gounod's opera Romeo et Juliette to Jean de Reszke's Romeo and became an overnight sensation. It is amazing,because she had no previous Stage experience. She later wrote, 'It was curious experience to go to the Opera as nobody, and to find oneself the next day the talk of two continents'.
Carlos Perón was the founder of globally renowned cult act Yello, initiator of the world’s first ever video clip, ‘The Evening’s Young’ from the group’s second album “Claro Que Si”. Following the fifth Yello album “You Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess”, which was released as the world’s first ever Compact Disc in 1983, Carlos left the group to embark on an ambitious solo career. After "Impersonator I" and "Die Schwarze Spinne", "Nothing Is True; Everything Is Permitted" was the 3rd solo release by Carlos Perón.
Sophie Dervaux’s debut album on Berlin Classics is very much in the French tradition. Together with her French colleague, pianist Sélim Mazari, the bassoonist presents works on this concept album Impressions that are by composers of various eras, including Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Fauré and Koechlin. The bassoon – unusually – takes the stage as a soloist and so fulfils the purpose that the Vienna Phil bassoonist had in mind: to present the unique singing sound of the instrument and enrich the world of the bassoon in the process.