Trois Mousqueter

Georg Friedrich Haas - Trois Hommages - Mabel Kwan (2018) {New Focus Recordings}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 277 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 170 Mb
Full Artwork (jpg+pdf) -> 24 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2018 Mabel Kwan / New Focus Recordings
Classical / Experimental / Modern Classical / Minimal

Chicago based pianist Mabel Kwan (Ensemble Dal Niente) releases the premiere recording of Georg Friedrich Haas' Trois Hommages, a beguiling work for two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart and played by one performer. Dedicated to Steve Reich, Gyorgy Ligeti, and Josef Matthias Hauer, Haas' expansive work deconstructs stylistic elements of prominent modern compositional aesthetics as well as the central association the piano has with equal temperament and its impact on music history.

Sinfonye - Trois Soeurs | Three Sisters - Songs from 13th-century France (2001) {Glossa Nouvelle Vision GCD 920704}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 304 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 140 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 61 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2001 Glossa Nouvelle Vision | GCD 920704
Classical / Medieval / Early Music / 13th Century

The three women that make up the early music ensemble Sinfonye tap into some of medieval France’s more lively and entertaining repertoire in this generously filled program of 13th-century songs and motets. Not surprisingly for performances of music from this period, the singers have assumed a certain interpretive license, not only in terms of the specifics of the vocal lines but also regarding accompaniments, which include the delightfully reedy sounds of hurdy-gurdy and medieval fiddle. In some cases, they begin with a piece in its more formal written form–a motet–and extract what probably was the original melody that inspired it.

There's a little joke behind the innocuous name of Ernest Bloch's Symphony in E-flat. It is, in truth, one of his most harmonically acerbic works, very close to the tortured contrapuntal idiom of another famous Swiss composer: Honegger. The piece only really achieves its home key in the quiet, final bars, but along the way sparks fly in all directions, and no matter how dissonant the idiom the argument is very easy to follow, and melodies and motives have distinctive, easily recognizable shapes.

For approaching a century and a half in France – across the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI – the Palace of Versailles played host, both indoors and outdoors, for an extraordinary sequence of dramatic musical performances. Un Opéra pour trois rois, conducted by György Vashegyi, represents the legacy of that time, a specially constructed operatic entertainment drawn from works by composers from Lully to Gluck, commissioned – and even, on occasion, performed – by kings, their queens and inamoratas.

Eclats de Trois Temps requires some attention. Probably the best listener of a record like this will simply be the one who will be able to dispose listening curious but alert, without limiting the explorations that this work opens. Maybe it's trite to say, but it seems necessary to hope so when the Italian jazz scene presents an exit so rare, how precious.