Cathedrals offers a journey for solo guitar through the great figures of South American music of the 20th and 21st centuries, where scholarly language is rooted in popular traditions. Performed by Stéphane de Carvalho, the album brings together works by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Léo Brouwer, Astor Piazzolla, Gentil Montaña, Ignacio Figueredo and Agustín Barrios-Mangoré, drawing a vast panorama of the styles, forms and aesthetics of the continent.

The Five Preludes by Villa-Lobos open the program and illustrate the fusion between Brazilian rhythms and European heritage, from Choro to Bachian memories. The works of Léo Brouwer, in particular Fandangos y Boleros, dialogue with multiple references, between Cuban folklore, modern writing and winks to Scriabine, Pasquini or Beethoven. Les Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas by Piazzolla, arranged by Sérgio Assad, extend this dialogue by combining the spirit of tango nuevo with contrapuntal writing inspired by Vivaldi.

The program is also enriched with emblematic pages of the Latin American repertoire, such as the Colombiana Suite No. 2 from Gentil Montaña or Los Caujaritos by Ignacio Figueredo, before ending with La Catedral by Agustín Barrios-Mangoré. Inspired by the Cathedral of Montevideo, this work concludes the album like a meditation, giving its title to this musical journey where the guitar becomes a place of passage between dance, spirituality and contemplation.

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It's raining women's voices brings together several works by the composerIce Sophie LacazeHeyWritten between 1996 and 2021, around the female voice, the verb and the relationship between music and meaning. The program combines vocal and mixed pieces, some from specific commissions, others reworked for this recording, and includes several world premieres. The voice plays a central role, in turn sung, spoken or recited, in close dialogue with the saxophone, the piano and the narrator.

The works presented explore the border between sacred and profane, ritual and daily speech. Inspired by texts by Jean-Pierre Rosnay, Guillaume Apollinaire or even Hildegarde de Bingen, they question the way in which the word becomes sound, then silence, and how music can extend its poetic, symbolic or spiritual charge. Sophie Lacaze's writing, attentive to tone and resonance, develops forms where repetition, incantation and the circulation of breath structure musical discourse.

Worn by the set Mora Vocis — female solo voices, with the participation of Els Janssens Vanmunster, Michel Supéra, Marie Vermeulin and Alain Carré, this recording highlights a unique approach to contemporary music, based on transmission, collective listening and the presence of text. It's raining women's voices thus testifies to a work where the voice becomes a space for meeting between poetry, theater and music.

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Published in 1719 in Paris, the Church music book by Alexandre de Villeneuve (1677—1756) brings together a rare set of sacred pages including nine Lessons of Darkness for the Sacred Triduum, psalms intended for various liturgical uses, as well as a Miserere. Long unpublished and never republished since their publication, these works bear witness to the vitality of the French religious repertoire of the early 18th century and to the essential place that music occupied in women's congregations, in particular at the Royal Abbey of Chelles, in particular at the Royal Abbey of Chelles, to which the book is dedicated.

Les Dark Lessons from the Third Day are part of the tradition of Holy Week Offices, based on Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah. Vocal writing, intended for an upper accompanied by basso continuo, combines syllabic declamation close to recitative and ornamentation inherited from the air of court. The alternation of tempi, the frequent use of dissonances and rich chords, as well as the brevity of the verses give this music great dramatic intensity, while maintaining a profound expressive sobriety.

This recording combines Lessons of Darkness to instrumental pieces taken from Sonata-style conversations published by Villeneuve in 1733, as well as answers from Procession for the Royal Abbey of Chelles by Jean-Baptiste Morin. Led by the Vedado Ensemble under the direction of Ronald Martin Alonso, with the mezzo-soprano Dagmar Šašková, this program restores the balance between liturgical fervor, musical refinement and dramaturgy specific to the Offices of Darkness, while respecting the sources and practices of the time.

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The Grand Ballet presents the Viola Pieces, Book III by Marin Marais, published in Paris in 1711, in a program devoted to one of the major collections of the French repertoire for the viola da gamba. Performed by Ensemble Vedado under the direction of Ronald Martin Alonso, this record highlights the expressive richness, diversity of dance forms and the stylistic requirements of this third book, which marks an important step in the evolution of Marais' writing.

Book III combines characterful pieces, traditional dances and works of great virtuosity, including Le Grand Ballet, which gives the album its title. Marais developed a particularly precise style of writing, particularly in the care given to the indications of bow, ornamentation and fingerings, offering performers a detailed framework for musical expression. This program also brings the viola into dialogue with the theorbo, the baroque guitar and the harpsichord, underlining the choreographic and instrumental roots of this repertoire.

Through this recording, Ensemble Vedado offers an attentive and informed reading of the aesthetics of Marais, between formal rigor and expressive freedom. The Grand Ballet is thus part of the continuity of the ensemble's projects devoted to the viola da gamba, and affirms its commitment to the transmission of the French Baroque repertoire.

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Dialogues brings together, around the viola da gamba, two worlds separated by more than three centuries, those of Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe and Philippe Hersant. Based on the pieces for solo viola preserved in the Tournus Manuscript, written around 1690, Ronald Martin Alonso proposes a journey where the freest Baroque writing resonates with contemporary works inspired by this heritage.

Sainte-Colombe's music, marked by improvisation, rhythmic freedom and expressiveness close to the voice, constitutes the core of the program. In contrast, Philippe Hersant's works continue this tradition and reinvest the viola da gamba as a solo instrument of today, capable of conveying a personal musical discourse while interacting with the past.

Conceived as an exchange without a break in time, Dialogues explores the continuity of a musical gesture and the ability of the viola da gamba to cross the centuries. The record highlights the instrument as a meeting place between memory, invention and contemporary sensitivity, in a wordless dialogue where affects, stories and resonances are mixed.

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Folias Americanas brings together the Ensemble Vedado around a program that brings together French music from the Grand Siècle and the musical traditions of the Americas. At the heart of the disc are the Three Viola Suites by Marin Marais, from the Fourth Book published in Paris in 1717, and the Folias Americanas by the Cuban composer Calixto Álvarez, a contemporary work inspired by the famous Folia theme.

This project was born from a long partnership between Ronald Martin Alonso and the Cuban violists Calia Álvarez and Lixsania Fernández, initiated in Cuba in the early 2000s and continued in Europe. The rediscovery of the Three Viola Suites by Marais served as an anchor for the construction of the program, to which Calixto Álvarez brought an enriched and original version of his Folias Americanas, developed for three viols, harpsichord and baroque guitar, with the addition of percussion in some variations.

Through the alternation of dances from the court of Versailles and rhythms from the Americas, Folias Americanas offers a path where dance is the common link between repertoires. The record thus affirms the identity of the Vedado Ensemble, a group dedicated to baroque and contemporary music, attentive to the circulations between Europe and the Americas, and to the transmission of a musical heritage without borders.

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Romancero is part of the tradition of romance, a poetic and narrative form from the Hispanic world, combining intimate stories and collective stories. This program brings together romances and songs where voices, poetry and guitar intersect, in a refined style that highlights the strength of the text and the expressive richness of the vocal line.

Mezzo-soprano Éleonore Gagey and guitarist Guillaume Bleton explore a repertoire mainly centered on 20th century Spanish and Latin American music. The selected works weave a journey between popular traditions and scholarly writing, bringing together poetry, the tone of the voice and the colors of the guitar in an intimate chamber music setting.

Conceived as a continuous musical story, Romancero proposes a journey through the recurring themes of the genre: love, absence, memory, death and transmission. The album highlights the close relationship between text and music, and seeks to restore the narrative and expressive dimension of these romances, in a sober and direct interpretation.

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Blessed Echoes — Lute Songs from the Time of Elizabeth I and James I is a program designed by the Ensemble Près de Votre Oreille around the tradition of English lute songs between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries. The project is part of the continuity of the research carried out during the disc Come Sorrow and is based on an extensive work of collecting, selecting and deciphering more than a hundred Elizabethan and Jacobean songs, from printed and handwritten sources.

The program includes works by John Dowland, Robert Jones, Thomas Jones, Thomas Jones, Thomas Campion, Thomas Ford, Philip Rosseter, Michael Cavendish, and Alfonso Ferrabosco II. The songs, originally written for voice and lute, are here enriched with lyra-violet parts specially composed by Robin Pharo, in accordance with historical practices attested at the time. The instrumentarium includes solo voices, Renaissance lute, viola da gamba, lyra-violet, virginal and cistre, making it possible to explore the expressive diversity of this vocal and instrumental repertoire.

The title Blessed Echoes is borrowed from a poem by Robert Jones and refers to the notion of resonance and memory, which is central to this project. The program combines ancient songs with contemporary creations, Reversibility, composed by Robin Pharo based on a poem by Charles Baudelaire, establishing a link between Renaissance musical practices and current writing. The recording was made in September 2021 at the Saint-Sylvain church in Saint-Sauvant, as part of a residency in co-production with the Abbaye aux Dames and the Saintes Festival.

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Quatuor Puccini was born from the meeting of four musicians from the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Lyon. Open to transversality, the ensemble explores collaborations with other arts and instruments, as in this first album bringing together harpist Sophie Bellanger and actress Laura Ketels. String quartet training allows them to approach a wide range of repertoire, from Haydn to 20th century composers.

The collaboration with Sophie Bellanger is a natural extension of the work carried out at the Opéra national de Lyon. A member of the Agora Ensemble, she has recorded several albums for young audiences and is developing an activity marked by contemporary music. Laura Ketels, a graduate in drama, leads a career as a stage manager, assistant director and performer, particularly in major opera and theater houses.

The program combines Claude Debussy's String Quartet op. 10, composed in 1893, a seminal work through its cyclic writing and search for stamps, with André Caplet's Fantastic Tale, written in 1923 for harp and string quartet. Inspired by the short story The Mask of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe, this work highlights the instrumental contrast and the role of the text, entrusted to the narrator, in a close dialogue between music and narration.

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Clairs de Lune brought together Hector Berlioz (1803—1869) and Gabriel Fauré (1845—1924) around a program for voice and string quartet, combining Les Nuits d'été, Op. 7 by Berlioz in a transcription for tenor and string quartet made by Emmanuel Haratyk, and a set of Fauré melodies transcribed for the same group. The album also includes Fauré's String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 121, composed in 1924. The project is a continuation of the Manfred Quartet's work on chamber vocal repertoire and on the confrontation between melodic writing and string quartet texture.

The recording brings together two contrasting aesthetics of French music. With Berlioz, the dramatic expressiveness and irregular prosody of Théophile Gautier's poems find a new dimension in writing that is intermediate between piano and orchestra. For Fauré, the harmonic intimacy and the sobriety of the discourse are expressed through his melodies — in particular La Chanson du Pêcheur, Les Berceaux, Les Roses d'Isfahan, Clair de Lune, La Rose and Après un Rêve — compared to the string quartet, a late and central work in his chamber music catalog.

Tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt is accompanied by the Manfred Quartet, composed of Marie Béreau and Luigi Vecchioni, violins, Emmanuel Haratyk, viola, and Christian Wolff, cello. The album highlights the close relationship between poetic text and musical writing, based on poems by Théophile Gautier, Sully Prudhomme, Leconte de Lisle, Paul Verlaine and Romain Bussine, and offers a coherent reading of the repertoire for voices and string quartets in French music of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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This disc brings together all of Sergei Prokofiev's original works for violin and piano, performed by violinist Kristi Gjezi and pianist Louis Lancic. Conceived as a monographic project, the album explores a central period in Sergei Prokofiev's production, marked by a return to classical forms, incisive rhythmic writing and strong expressive tension.

The two major Sonatas for violin and piano, Op. 80 and Op. 94bis, occupy a central place in this program. Composed during the composer's Soviet period, they bear witness to two contrasting faces of his language: one dark, tense and almost harsh, the other more luminous, lyrical and directly inherited from the original flute version. The Five Melodies Op. 35bis complete this set, offering a more intimate and melodic counterpoint, based on folklore and wordless singing.

The interpretation by Kristi Gjezi and Louis Lancien is part of a sober and structured approach, attentive to the balance between voices and formal clarity. Inspired by their experience with chamber music and orchestra, this reading highlights the rhythmic richness, harmonic density and melodic meaning that make Prokofiev one of the great composers of the 20th century.

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Obsessions brings together a program for solo violin built around founding figures and assumed filiations, from Johann Sebastian Bach to Eugène Ysaÿe, via Franz Schubert, Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, George Enescu and contemporary creation. This journey brings together transcription, virtuosity and heritage, in a constant dialogue between polyphonic writing, instrumental gesture and musical memory.

The disc opens with Bach's Fantasy and Fugue in G minor BWV 542 in transcription by Tedi Papavrami, before deploying several sonatas by Ysaÿe, including the Second, Third and Sixth Sonata for solo violin, emblematic works of the 20th century that explicitly question the notion of obsession, quotation and stylistic overcoming. The program continues with Impressions of Childhood by George Enescu and Le Grand Caprice sur Le Roi des Alders by Schubert arranged by Ernst, the pinnacle of virtuoso literature.

The presence of Juan Arroyo with Dormiveglia and Paralelo places this project in a living continuity, where contemporary creation dialogues with Bach and tradition. Obsessions is thus presented as an interior itinerary for solo violin, crossed by polyphony, memory and the transformation of forms, carried by a demanding approach to sound, structure and musical discourse.

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After eight years on stage together, the SpiriTango Quartet offers with Transgressions a project that is at the crossroads of tango, contemporary music and chamber music. The ensemble affirms a singular identity, based on original arrangements and instrumental writing that goes beyond the traditional frameworks of tango, while maintaining its rhythmic and expressive energy.

The program brings together emblematic works from the repertoire, such as Camorra III and Romance del Diablo by Astor Piazzolla, with creations and pieces by contemporary French composers, including Matthieu Stefanelli (Cabeceo), Alexandre Fontaines (Para Descansar) and Graciane Finzi (Tango print). The assumed choice of the accordion instead of the bandoneon gives the ensemble a specific sound palette, central to the aesthetics of the project.

Highlight of the album, theOpale Concerto by Richard Galliano is presented in a new version for chamber music. The program also opens up to Latin America with the works of Luis Caruana, as well as Brazilian plays Odeon and Tico-Tico, entirely arranged by the Spiritango Quartet. The participation of percussionist Vassilena Serafimova reinforces the rhythmic dimension and further broadens the sound spectrum of this live recording.

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Volts offers an overview of contemporary music for string quartets and electronics, by exploring the multiple forms that mixed music can take today. From pre-recorded tape to real-time electronics and improvisation, this album brings together different aesthetics and technologies, inscribed in historical continuity but resolutely focused on current creation.

The program brings together works by Fausto Romitelli, Gilbert Nouno, Juan Arroyo, Remmy Canedo and Christophe Havel, offering a contrasting panorama of the relationships between acoustic instruments and electronic devices. The Tana Instruments, new generation hybrid instruments, here allow electronics to be broadcast directly through the sound box of the instruments, profoundly modifying the perception of sound and the listening space.

Led by the Tana Quartet, Volts is part of the tradition of modern string quartets while expanding their borders. The album affirms an uncompromising, plural and committed approach, where sound research and musical rigor interact to draw the contours of a repertoire that is already part of the history of contemporary creation.

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This recording brings together two major works by Dmitri Shostakovich — Piano Trios op. 8 and op. 67 — compared with two scores by Sergei Prokofiev, the Ballad for Cello and Piano op. 15 and the Five Melodies op. 35 in their version for violin. Composed between youth and maturity, love and war, these works illustrate two contrasting trajectories of 20th-century Russian music, between tense lyricism, dark irony and extreme dramaturgy. Shostakovich's Second Trio, dedicated to Ivan Sollertinsky, stands out as a pivotal work, with requiem accents and an intense emotional charge.

The Khaldei Trio approaches this repertoire with particular attention paid to timbral contrasts, rhythmic density, and the clarity of formal discourse. The dialogue between piano, violin and cello highlights the internal tensions of these works, from the romantic writing of the first trio to the harsher and fragmented textures of the second. Prokofiev's pages extend this exploration with a narrative and nocturnal writing, where the piano structures the sound space while the strings develop a continuous expressive line.

This album is part of the artistic approach of the Khaldei Trio, which explores the links between music, history and memory, in particular in the Russian repertoire of the first half of the 20th century. By comparing works of youth and scores of maturity, this program offers a coherent and committed reading of these emblematic pages, underlining their expressive force and their human scope, beyond any strictly stylistic approach.

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When Alice Ader approaches the work of Federico Mompou, she enters a universe of memory, silence and interiority. Mompou's music, deeply marked by the unspeakable and the elsewhere, finds its most stripped-down expression in the Música Callada cycle, composed between 1959 and 1967. Inspired by the mystical poetry of Saint John of the Cross, this cycle of twenty-eight pieces explores writing that is reduced to the essentials, where the piano becomes resonance, light and complaint, and where each piece, although distinct, contributes to a unity of color and atmosphere.

The formal structure of Música Callada is most often based on a simple A—B—A scheme, opposing refined harmonies to breaks in tension and dissonance. Alice Ader highlights the expressive diversity of the cycle: slow wanderings, haunting bells, memories of Catalan folk melodies, desperate wanderings or luminous meditations. This music, which Vladimir Jankélévitch described as a “distant presence”, remains veiled by an ancient memory and by a spirituality that runs through the whole work.

The program is completed by Paisajes, a triptych composed between 1942 and 1960, bringing together La Fuente y la Campana, El Lago and Carros de Galicia. These descriptive pieces extend the poetic universe of Mompou through evocative and sensory writing. Recorded in concert on a Steinway & Sons piano from 1897, restored and tuned for the occasion, this album testifies to an intimate relationship with sound, suspended time and inner listening, at the heart of the Catalan composer's aesthetic.

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This recording brings together two works under the sign of the starry sky: the Quartet in E minor op. 59 no. 2 by Ludwig van Beethoven, a pillar of the so-called “heroic” style, and the Quartet no. 4 The Starry Sky by Philippe Hersant, composed in direct resonance with this seminal work. Through this comparison, the Girard Quartet explores the tensions between light and shade, lyricism and drama, meditation and momentum, which cross these two scores and link them across the centuries.

The Quartet op. 59 no. 2, dedicated to Count Razumovsky, marks a decisive stage in the history of string quartet because of the breadth of its form, the intensity of its discourse and the depth of its musical thought. Son Molto Adagio, often described as a “meditation under the starry sky”, is the spiritual heart of the work. Philippe Hersant is freely inspired by it in The Starry Sky, integrating Beethovenian thematic and rhythmic elements while adding his own writing, nourished by references to the Russian soul and to the universe of Shostakovich.

The result of a long attendance with all of Beethoven's quartets, this album reflects a significant stage in the career of the Girard Quartet, enriched by their residence at the Queen Elizabeth Music Chapel and by their collaboration with the luthier Charles Coquet. The recording does not seek to freeze an interpretation, but to bear witness to a living moment of research, transmission and dialogue between tradition and contemporary creation.

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Soleils de Nuit is an album for solo piano performed by Mara Dobresco, built as a nocturnal stroll around the theme of night, shadow and light. The program brings together works from different periods, from romanticism to contemporary creation, structured around the form of the nocturnal and pieces associated with the nocturnal universe. The album combines composers from the established repertoire and composers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Alongside nocturnal works by Frédéric Chopin, Edward Grieg, Edward Grieg, Claude Debussy, and Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky, the program compares works that are more rarely recorded, such as nocturnal works by Dinu Lipatti and Benjamin Britten, the Carillon Nocturne by George Enesco, and the Carillon Nocturne by George Enesco, as well as contemporary pieces by Oscar Strasnoy, Philippe Hersant and Anatol Vieru. The choice of works was made gradually, with particular attention paid to the sequences of tones and to the continuity of the musical journey.

The album concludes with a posthumous work by George Enesco from Impromptu Pieces, evoking the bells of monasteries in northern Romania. Recorded in 2017 at Salle Colonne, Soleils de Nuit reflects Mara Dobresco's link with the nocturnal repertoire, her interest in contemporary music and her constant dialogue between piano heritage and current creation.

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