Ultra Vomit et le Pouvoir de la Puissance

This new OSR recording presents the two most ambitious musical responses to Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1893 epoch-making play Pelléas et Mélisande.

Adam de la Halle (c. 1237 - 1288) was one of the first composers to receive the honour of having manuscripts copied comprising his complete works, surely indicative of the esteem in which he was held. De la Halle moved between two worlds as the music of the courts of the nobility was moving out into the aspiring merchant classes of the cities.
His songs of courtly love are characterised by, to use his own phrase, "mal joli", or delightful woe.

Jordi Savall - Monsieur de Sainte Colombe le fils & Marin Marais - Le Parnasse de la Viole (2003) {3CD Box Set Alia Vox AV9829}
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© 2003 Alia Vox | AV 9829 A/C
Classical / Baroque / Viola da gamba

Jordi Savall's exquisite three-disc box set entitled Le Parnasse de la viole is devoted to the passionately expressive and virtuosic music of two great French Baroque composers, Sainte-Colombe the Younger and Marin Marais. The six suites by Sainte-Colombe adhere to the familiar form established by the end of the seventeenth century; each consists of such familiar dances as the allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue, and gavotte.

The well-known Concert de la Loge, the period instruments orchestra led by the violinist Julien Chauvin, return with the third episode of Haydn’s journey in Paris.

Four years after her boundary\-breaking album Bach Unlimited, pianist Lise de la Salle presents an extremely personal odyssey inspired by her love of the dance and her fascination with the period 1850 to 1950. More than just a question, Lise de la Salle’s ‘when do we dance?’ is an invitation to a voyage, ‘one that explores the different ways in which dance takes possession of the body’. A voyage in time, through a whole century (1850\-1950) with the accent on modernity; a voyage over the oceans, from North America to Eastern Europe, crisscrossing Argentina, Spain, France, Hungary and Russia; a voyage to the very core of rhythm, that essential anchor point for the dance as for music in general, that enlivens the ragtimes of Gershwin and Bolcom, Bartók’s folk dances, a waltz by Saint\-Saëns and a tango by Stravinsky.

Soprano Sandrine Piau has been known mostly as a Baroque specialist, but she has recorded several albums of 19th century French mélodies with spectacular results. Si j'ai aimé (the title comes from one of three songs by the little-known Théodore Dubois) will be very hard for her to outdo. The list of attractions is very long and begins with the repertory. There are some familiar pieces here, such as the opening pair of songs by Saint-Saëns, but many of the composers – Dubois, Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant – are rarely performed, at least outside France, and all the songs here are top-notch.

Rameau had the somewhat dubious fortune (in his own time, at least) to be such a powerful creative personality in the field of orchestral music that the quality of his dances sometimes overwhelms the operatic context in which he places them. From our point of view today, this hardly seems a liability, especially when it permits the performance of marvelous orchestral suites such as this from his various theatrical productions. Les Indes galantes (1735) contains some wonderful dance music, scored with the composer's usual imaginative flair.

The present recording brings together various examples of night music from the European tradition and constitutes a kaleidoscope refracting the manifold facets of night. In tells of brilliant celebrations, nocturnal love dramas and desires, tender lullabies, ghosts, birds of the night and the most holy of nights. It is Antonio Vivaldi's music that is pivotal to our recording. Providing a bridge between his works and functioning as interludes are songs, diminutions, motets, madrigals, sommeils and chaconnes from Spai, the Netherlands, France, England, Italy, Germany and Austria.