Album devoted to, XASAX plays Leoš Janáček offers a rich and contrasting journey through the world of the Czech composer through original transcriptions for saxophone quartet.

Led by the strong personalities of the XASAX ensemble (Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, Marcus Weiss, Jean-Michel Goury, Serge Bertocchi), the program goes through several emblematic cycles: Moravian songs, piano works (On a bushy path), late sketches (Intimes) and excerpts from the Glagolitic mass.

Between vocal writing, folklore and modernity, these pieces reveal all the uniqueness of Janáček's language, here enhanced by the warmth and sound plasticity of saxophones, in a constant dialogue between tradition and reinvention.

‍

Madre Selva is an ode to nature and to Mother Earth, created by Diana Baroni and Ronald Martin Alonso as an extension of their desire to connect memory, territories and transmitted traditions. Designed as a tribute, an offering, and a call, the program evokes the forces of life — water, earth, fire, and air — as well as the human responsibility to preserve what protects and balances the world.

Designed as a musical journey, the album brings together a repertoire rooted in the ancestral heritage of Latin America, from the Andes to Mexico, from the Caribbean to the Bolivian plateaus. Songs in indigenous languages, oral traditions, poetry, poetry, rhythms and ancient sources dialogue in a common artistic space where memories meet across borders.

With Diana Baroni, Ronald Martin Alonso and the Vedado Ensemble, Madre Selva deploys a singular sonic alchemy, nourished by the percussions of Keyvan Chemirani and Abraham Mansfarroll, the kora of Tunde Jegede, as well as the jarana and the pre-Columbian aerophones of Rafael Güel Frías. Between meditation, celebration and invention, this album offers a deeply living and poetic musical experience.

‍

With Role Play, the ensemble Les Mondes Baroques offers a singular journey through French music from the middle of the 18th century, placed under the sign of miscegenation and curiosity. At the heart of this program are the bass sonatas by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, whose hybrid writing combines French taste and Italian taste, scholarly forms and popular inspirations. These works dialogue with well-known tunes, dances and songs from a variety of sources, brought together as pieces from a musical cabinet of curiosities.

Around these sonatas are Les Sauvages by Jean-Philippe Rameau, Lisette Quit la Plaine attributed to Antoine Albanese, La Curieuse associated with Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, as well as pieces by Louis-François Joseph Patouart and Danses de Chiffre brought back by Charles-Henri de Blainville. Some pages, sung in 18th century Haitian Creole or inspired by extra-European traditions, bear witness to the circulation of styles, stories and imaginaries during the Baroque period. Percussion, integrated in a dramaturgical way, reinforces this narrative and ritual dimension.

Led by Anne-Charlotte Dupas and Xavier Marquis, Jeu de Rules brings together a cast of rare colors: cello, bassoon, chalumeau, harpsichord, archiluth, percussion and double bass, to which is added the voice of Julie Roset. The ensemble Les Mondes Baroques affirms here a living and embodied vision of the repertoire, where the interpretation is based as much on historical research as on the freedom of play and the imaginary, making French Baroque music resonate in all its expressive diversity.

‍

Métamorphoses explores the multiple faces of French melody between the end of the 19th century and the first 20th century, in a program where poetry and instrumental color occupy a central place. Through a selection of works by Debussy, Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Taffanel and their contemporaries, this album highlights an aesthetic of change, transformation and passage, where text, vocal line and flute dialogue closely.

The program combines famous melodies and rarer pages, revealing the expressive richness of this repertoire and the diversity of writings. The composers invited explore in turn the intimacy of singing, poetic suggestion, lyrical momentum or impressionist transparency. The flute, in turn partner, extension or commentary of the voice, contributes to this impression of movement and permanent metamorphosis, supported by refined piano writing.

Led by Belinda Kunz, mezzo-soprano, Sandrine François on flute, and Valentin Mansard on piano, Métamorphoses is part of a tradition of chamber music attentive to text and musical breathing. The album offers a sensitive and structured reading of French melody, where collective listening and the clarity of the discourse serve a coherent and deeply embodied poetic journey.

‍

Charles-François Grégoire de La Ferté's Forgotten Sonatas have accompanied the La Ferté Ensemble since 2022, the year they were rediscovered and first deciphered. From the very first readings, the musicians were struck by the originality of this deeply personal repertoire, which is not linked to the models of Rebel, Jacquet de La Guerre or Marchand. This music reveals a singular language, nourished by the Lullist heritage, assumed Italian influences and a highly developed sense of dance and bass line.

Published in 1707, La Ferté's First Book of Sonatas for Violin and Bass testifies to a pivotal moment in the history of French music, where the Italian sonata was gradually integrated into national taste. Structured in two parts of six sonatas, the collection explores a wide variety of forms, characters and tones. For this recording, Ensemble La Ferté proposes an order designed as a musical journey, respecting the main harmonic poles of the collection while highlighting the expressive diversity of each sonata.

Founded by Paulo Castrillo, Manon Chapelle and Nicolas Mackowiak, Ensemble La Ferté is dedicated to exploring the first French repertoire for violin and basso continuo through an approach based on historical practices. Low position of the violin, French bow, ornamentation inspired by treatises from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, use of the harpsichord and the positive organ contribute to a lively and committed reading of these sonatas. This first recording is both the culmination of several years of collective research and the starting point of an artistic project dedicated to the rediscovery of a musical heritage that is still largely unknown.

‍

Between Paris and Brussels, around 1830, the romantic guitar enjoyed a discreet but refined golden age. This album explores a rare repertoire, located at the crossroads of French elegance and cosmopolitan romanticism, through works by Victor Magnien, Marco Aurelio Zani de Ferranti and Napoléon Coste, figures that are currently too little present on the record but essential to the history of the instrument.

To serve this program, Élodie Brzustowski relies on three historic guitars, instruments signed Joseph Klimits (1824), Jean Joseph Coffe-Goguette (around 1830) and René Lacote (1841), whose specific stamps illuminate each work according to its aesthetic and geographical context. Concerting fantasies, biblical nocturnal plays and characterful pieces make up a sensitive journey, where the guitar becomes in turn a lyrical voice, a living room instrument and a virtuoso soloist.

Through this demanding and coherent choice, the album offers a rediscovery of the romantic guitar as an instrument of intimate narration and profound expressiveness. Paris — Brussels, 1830 is thus part of a rigorous as well as poetic musicological approach, offering a renewed look at a repertoire that is at once scholarly, expressive and deeply embodied.

‍