The album Exquisite night brings together German songs and French melodies around the theme of night, a central theme of European romanticism. The mezzo-soprano Alice Ferrière is accompanied on the piano by Sascha El Mouissi. In particular, the program combines works by Robert Schumann (Opus 90), Richard Strauss, Hector Berlioz (Summer Nights), Claude Debussy, Nadia Boulanger and Irène Poldowski, establishing a dialogue between the German and French traditions of song and melody.

Alice Ferrière grew up in Réunion and received her first musical education at the island's conservatory. After university studies in political history at the Sorbonne, she devoted herself to lyric singing and continued her training at the University of Music and Dramatic Art in Vienna, where she obtained a master's degree in opera in 2012. Winner of international competitions and of Michel Plasson's Académie de Musique Française, she regularly performs in recitals and operas in France, Austria and internationally, with a particular interest in lied and melody.

The pianist Sascha El Mouissi, a specialist in vocal accompaniment and chamber music, was trained in Vienna and Mainz. He has performed at numerous festivals and international venues and collaborates regularly with leading singers. The recording was made in January 2018 at the Salle Colonne in Paris. The album is produced by the Paraty label, with sound recording, editing and mastering provided by Étienne Collard

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Voyage Esquisse is an invitation to travel within, through a repertoire where the miniature becomes a landscape and where the sketch reveals all its expressive power. Designed around the dialogue between saxophone and piano, this album highlights an art of detail, color and suggestion, nourished by French elegance and the imaginary of travel.

Performed by Alexandre Souillart, saxophone, and Matthieu Acar, piano, and Matthieu Acar, piano, the program includes works marked by stylized folklore, perfumes from elsewhere and finely crafted writing, heir to the first half of the 20th century. The transcriptions and arrangements, designed as real recreations, reveal a rich sound palette, where the flexibility of the saxophone dialogues with the depth and clarity of the piano.

At the crossroads of virtuosity and poetry, Voyage Esquisse offers listening that is both refined and accessible. The album is part of a renewed chamber music tradition, offering a sensitive and contemporary look at musical pages where evocation, character and emotion take precedence over demonstration.

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Blued Voices is a deeply personal project by composer and multi-instrumentalist Alejandro Bonatto, born from a long process of maturation and memory. The works that make up this album, written over more than twenty years, draw a soundscape where memories, inner voices and traces of the past mingle, in an atmosphere that is both intimate and cinematographic.

At the crossroads of acoustic and electronic writing, Alejandro Bonatto develops a singular language, nourished by baroque, romantic and contemporary references, but always transformed by a sensitive approach to tone and space. Electronic textures extend the instruments, voices become sound materials, and each piece seems to emerge as a fragile and suspended fragment of memory.

Blued Voices can be listened to as an emotional journey, where time expands and where the boundaries between written music, improvisation and soundscape blur. This album reveals Alejandro Bonatto's artistic voice in all its depth, offering an immersive, introspective and resolutely current listening experience.

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3 Aspects of Emotions explores three contrasting expressive worlds through solo piano, bringing together Maurice Ravel, Aleksandar Petrović and Alexandre Scriabin. This program draws an emotional journey from refined clarity to visionary intensity, where each work reveals a singular facet of modern sensibility.

A pianist with a deeply embodied game, Vanya Pesheva approaches these pages as if they were inner landscapes. For Ravel, the color and transparency of the stamp evoke suspended poetry; for Petrović, contemporary writing is part of an assertive dramatic and rhythmic tension; finally, for Scriabine, mystical momentum and harmonic freedom open up an incandescent sound space.

Through this dialogue between styles, eras and languages, Vanya Pesheva builds a coherent and personal story, where virtuosity always remains at the service of expressiveness. 3 Aspects of Emotions thus stands out as an introspective and contrasting piano album, inviting the listener to a dense, intimate and resolutely current emotional journey.

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With the complete Waltzes by Frédéric Chopin, Aimo Pagin offers much more than an exhaustive journey: a sensitive immersion in the intimate universe of a composer who profoundly renewed piano writing. Far from the worldly or strictly danceable waltz, Chopin deploys a range of contrasting emotions, where virtuosity meets confidence, lightness meets melancholic shade, and where each piece seems to carry a singular, almost autobiographical voice.

Interpreted by Aimo Pagin, these pages reveal all their poetic and structural richness. His approach, nourished by a profound culture of the romantic repertoire and by a constant attention to inner singing, highlights the delicacy of lines, the rhythmic flexibility and the harmonic ambiguity specific to Chopin. Recorded on a Bösendorfer piano, these Waltzes benefit from a broad and nuanced sound, ideal for restoring the expressive depth and clarity of musical discourse.

This record is thus a faithful and personal reading of one of the most emblematic works of the piano repertoire. Through this integral, Aimo Pagin affirms a coherent and inhabited vision of Chopin, composer of secrecy, elegance and inner intensity, offering the listener a continuous journey between brilliance, nostalgia and sonic refinement.

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Cantar de Novo marks the creative return of the A Banda & Guests project, driven by the desire to reconnect with collective momentum, song and the joy of shared play. At the crossroads of Brazilian popular music, French-language songs and resolutely contemporary writing, this album claims a living, warm and deeply human energy, where each piece is built as a space for meeting.

Around the core formed by Julien Doumenjou and Patricia Lestre, A Banda is surrounded by a constellation of guests who come to enrich the textures, the tones and the colors. Voices, strings, winds and percussion interact in a spirit of permanent circulation, making each title a small open stage where narration, rhythm and melody advance together, without a fixed hierarchy.

Between assumed nostalgia and a look to the future, Cantar de Novo celebrates the pleasure of singing again, of telling the world with simplicity and depth. The album affirms a free, collective and sincere musical identity, where the diversity of influences nourishes an accessible, committed and generous writing, inviting the listener to share a moment of authentic and unifying music.

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Mimesis is a program devoted to the art of transcription and imitation by Johann Sebastian Bach, at the very heart of his musical thought. True to a widespread Baroque tradition, the Laterna Magica ensemble offers here an inventive rereading of emblematic works, where the transformation of the original material is neither a matter of copying nor of simple adaptation, but of a genuine creative gesture. Through these transcriptions, Bach's music reveals a new light, while maintaining the spiritual and architectural strength that characterizes it.

The trio sonatas, choral preludes, and concert pages combined in this recording explore the subtle balance between contrapuntal rigor and instrumental expressiveness. The lines dialogue, imitate and respond to each other in a game of textures where recorders, cello, harpsichord and organ deploy a sound palette of great clarity. Sacred music and chamber music come together in the same dynamic, where Italian momentum, French finesse and Germanic depth naturally coexist.

Based on a thorough practice of transcription, this recording is performed by Laterna Magica, with Nathalie Houtman and Laura Pok on recorders, Bernard Woltèche on cello, and Raphaël Collignon on harpsichord and organ. Their approach highlights the spirit of mimesis dear to Bach, in which imitation becomes a source of renewal and expansion of sound space, offering the listener a listening experience that is at once skilful, fluid and deeply expressive.

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Opera Minima: Handel with Care offers an intimate and inventive re-reading of the operatic universe of Georg Friedrich Handel, by exploring his operas in a reduced and chamber music form. Far from the monumental nature of the major Baroque scenes, this project highlights the expressive force of the melody, the theatricality of the musical gesture and the emotional power of the text, concentrated in a deliberately refined format.

The Laterna Magica ensemble takes up these pages with great artistic freedom, playing on the proximity between voices and instruments. The selected arias and extracts reveal Handel's dramatic richness, where human passions, inner conflicts and virtuoso impulses unfold with direct intensity. This minimalist approach gives back to listening, breathing and musical narration.

Led by the interpreters of Laterna Magica, Opera Minima: Handel with Care offers a new gateway to Baroque opera, accessible without ever being simplified. The project affirms Handel's sensitive and contemporary vision, where the reduction of resources reinforces the expressive depth and theatrical force of the music.

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With this second volume of Les Masses by Jehan Titelouze, the Ensemble Les Meslanges is continuing a major exploration of the French sacred heritage of the early 17th century. Considered the father of the French organ school, Titelouze deploys here a writing of remarkable architectural scope, where vocal polyphony interacts closely with the organ in a deeply structured liturgical thought.

Under the musical direction of Thomas Van Essen and Volny Hostiou, Ensemble Les Meslanges brings these rare pages back to life with particular attention paid to the clarity of the text, to the balance of the lines and to the rhetoric of sacred discourse. The alternation between hymns, Magnificat and organ pieces reveals the expressive richness of a language at the crossroads of the late Renaissance and the beginnings of French Baroque.

The historic organ of Champcueil, run by François Ménissier, plays a central role in this sound recreation, bringing color, breath and depth to the entire program. This volume II stands out as a discographic reference, both musically rigorous and intensely inhabited, offering a rare immersion in the spiritual and sonic universe of Jehan Titelouze.

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Les Masses by Jehan Titelouze offer an exceptional immersion in the birth of the French organ school at the beginning of the 17th century. Through hymns, Magnificat and organ pieces, this first volume highlights liturgical music of great contrapuntal richness, where plainsong dialogues with scholarly writing in an aesthetic that is both solemn and deeply expressive.

Interpreted according to the practice of Alternatim, these works reveal the central role of the organ in the French liturgy of the late Renaissance. Titelouze's writing, influenced by the Franco-Flemish counterpoint, deploys a rigorous sound architecture, supported by a dense spirituality and remarkable formal clarity.

The Ensemble Les Meslanges, under the direction of Thomas Van Essen and Volny Hostiou, teams up with François Ménissier at the Champcueil organ to restore all the strength and subtlety of this founding repertoire. This record is a major rediscovery of an essential composer and an important milestone for the understanding of French sacred music.

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Dialogue de l'Eau et de l'Air explores Claude Debussy's piano universe through a sensitive and poetic journey through his soundscapes. Water, wind, movement and light form the common thread of this program, where the musical material seems to be in perpetual metamorphosis. The works selected reveal a Debussy who is both an architect of sound and a painter of the moment, where each motif suggests a space, a breath, a vibration.

At the piano with four hands, Véra Tsybakov and Romain Hervé create a real game of resonances and mirrors, giving substance to this elementary dialogue between fluidity and breath. Their approach highlights the harmonic richness, rhythmic flexibility and the transparency of textures, especially in the transcriptions of La Mer, Les Préludes and the iconic pages inspired by water and nature. Here, the piano becomes an orchestra of nuances, capable of suggesting depth, movement and clarity.

This program highlights Debussy's intact modernity and his art of allusions, where nothing is ever fixed. Dialogue of Water and Air offers immersive, intimate and contemplative listening, driven by high musical standards and constant attention to tone. A record that invites you to rediscover Debussy from the angle of shared gesture and inner listening.

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Birth of Venus offers a vast panorama of French choral music of the 20th century, where the voice becomes at once sound material, poetic gesture and ritual force. From medieval finesse revisited by Claude Debussy to the visionary vocal architectures of Olivier Messiaen, this program crosses contrasting worlds that question the relationship between text, tone and spirituality. Each work explores a singular facet of vocal expression, between clarity of diction, sensuality of colors and formal audacity.

Under the direction of Mihály Zeke, Arsys Bourgogne deploys a palette of great expressive richness in major works by Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Francis Poulenc, Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud and Joseph Canteloube. The Three Songs by Charles d'Orléans and the Three Songs by Ravel dialogue with the harsh and dramatic climates of À Contrevoix, the poignant sobriety of A Snow Evening and the incantatory tension of Les Cinq Rechants. The Birth of Venus by Milhaud, the central work of the program, brings out a telluric and archaic energy, nourished by rhythms and essential colors.

Through this demanding career, Arsys Bourgogne affirms its artistic identity based on precision, collective commitment and the search for meaning. The ensemble renders these scores with remarkable dramatic intensity and vocal mastery, making Birth of Venus a record that is both deeply embodied and emblematic of the French choral revival. This program highlights the voice as a place of memory, birth, and metamorphosis.

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This disc reveals the sonatas for cello and basso continuo by Giorgio Antoniotto, an Italian composer born in Milan in 1681 and died in Calais in 1766, a singular figure of the beginning of the 18th century. Long in the shadows, his music is distinguished by a remarkable harmonic audacity and an expressive writing that goes beyond the simple function of bass then devolved to the cello. These pages bear witness to a pivotal moment when the instrument asserted itself as a true solo voice.

Performed by the Hemiolia Ensemble, with Claire Lamquet on cello, these sonatas reveal a subtle alternation between meditative sensuality and incisive virtuosity. The slow movements unfold an almost vocal depth, while the fast sections, inspired by violinism, highlight the energy and inventiveness of the musical discourse. The continuo, enriched by the viola da gamba, harpsichord and theorbo, provides a refined and lively color palette.

This recording is an essential rediscovery of a composer with a turbulent European career, soldier, theoretician and musician. Antoniotto's sonatas appear here as the most tangible testimony of his sonic imagination, between Italian tradition and experimental research, offering the Baroque cello repertoire a contribution that is as rare as it is precious.

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Dualità is a piano journey designed as an exploration of the tension between opposites, between dissonance and reconciliation, chaos and balance. Through seventeen works — including five personal compositions — the pianist Silas Bassa weaves a continuous thread linking very contrasting aesthetic worlds, from Johann Sebastian Bach to Philip Glass, from Messiaen to Berio, from Górecki to Ravel. The album is built as an organic entity, guided by a unique energy where each piece dialogues with the next in a constant game of oscillations and mirrors.

The program opens with Regard du Père by Olivier Messiaen, a vertiginous confrontation between man and the infinite, to which Kleinstücke, the first work composed by Silas Bassa, responds. The Studies of Philip Glass, the Sonata op. 6 by Henryk Górecki or the Wasserklavier by Luciano Berio extend this reflection on the inner divide, contained violence and the search for meaning. The presence of the poem Le Gibet by Aloysius Bertrand, recited by Nita Klein, and the eponymous play by Maurice Ravel introduces the theme of death, suspended time and immobile anxiety.

Silas Bassa's original compositions, from Santa Fe to Into the Rush, mark out this journey as tipping points, seeking to overcome duality to reach a form of inner non-duality. Recorded on a Steinway D piano, Dualità is a deeply personal project, where the performer fully assumes his role as composer, narrator and presenter. This record offers an immersive experience that is both introspective and universal, inviting the listener to cross their own areas of tension in order to find a fragile balance.

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This program dedicated to Marin Marais spans twenty-five years of creation, from the Second Book of Viola Pieces (1701) to the Fifth Book (1725), offering a dense and contrasting panorama of the art of the greatest French violist of the reign of Louis XIV. Suites, preludes, fantasies, chaconnes and tombs compose a universe where dance, eloquence and expressiveness come together in a writing of exceptional clarity, made immediately legible by the richness of the indications left by the composer.

Les Folies d'Espagne, emblematic variations of Book II, dialogue here with the major late suites, revealing the stylistic evolution of Marais, from flamboyant virtuosity to a more introspective depth. This music, both scholarly and carnal, unfolds like a sound theater where each piece tells the story of a character, a mood or an inner landscape, in a musical language that remains surprisingly direct and lively.

Fuoco E Cenere offers an embodied and narrative reading of this repertoire, led by Jay Bernfeld (viola da gamba, direction), Ronald Martin Alonso (viola da gamba), André Henrich (theorbo) and Bertrand Cuiller (harpsichord). Their interpretation favors the breath, the color and the continuity of the discourse, making Marin Marais hear not as a museum figure, but as a composer of flesh and voice, always capable of touching today's listeners.

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With Viola Pieces (1709), Fuoco E Cenere revives one of the little-known treasures of the French Grand Siècle: the First Book of Violle Pieces by Jacques Morel, published in Paris during the reign of Louis XIV. A committed student of Marin Marais, Morel deploys the refined art of the French suite, combining dance, eloquence and sound poetry, in a style that is both intimate and deeply expressive.

The four suites for bass viola, built around improvised preludes and stylized dances, reveal compact music, thought as a coherent whole, enriched with portraits, places and characters. The program ends with a sumptuous Chaconne in trio, where the viola dialogues with the continuo and the flute or the violin, offering a luminous synthesis of French taste at the turn of the 18th century.

Under the direction of violist Jay Bernfeld, Fuoco E Cenere recreates this music with remarkable narrative intensity and freedom of breath. Jay Bernfeld (viola da gamba, direction), André Henrich (theorbo), Ronald Martin Alonso (viola da gamba), Bertrand Cuiller (harpsichord), Patricia Lavail (recorder), Pamela Bernfeld (violin), Pamela Bernfeld (violin) offer a lively, detailed and deeply embodied reading, giving Jacques Morel back the place he deserves among the great masters of French viola.

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The Woods so Wild explores two centuries of English instrumental music, from the middle of the 16th to the 17th centuries, through the prism of the consort, an emblematic formation of the British Renaissance. Pavanes, gaillardes, fantasies, variations and mask dances draw a soundscape of exceptional richness, where melancholic elegance meets rhythmic energy and contrapuntal refinement. This repertoire, long associated with court entertainments and the domestic practices of the Elizabethan aristocracy, reveals a deeply unique musical identity, both open to continental influences and jealously preserved.

Consort Brouillamini brings these pages back to life by offering his own transcriptions for recorder consort, a formation that has been historically attested at the English court as early as the reign of Henry VIII. The works of Holborne, Byrd, Tye, Farnaby, Farnaby, Locke or Purcell are discussed here with particular attention paid to sources, ancient treatises and historical instruments, whether Renaissance or Baroque. This approach highlights the gradual evolution of the English musical language, from the aesthetics of the late Renaissance to the beginnings of the Concertant style.

Both scholarly and lively, The Woods so Wild restores the abundant vitality of this repertoire, where dance music, consort music and forms from the theatrical world are constantly in dialogue. True to its daring and inventive identity, Consort Brouillamini offers an immersive journey into a highly expressive world of sound, revealing all the poetry, diversity and modernity of English instrumental music of the 16th and 17th centuries.

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This program offers a daring and rigorous rereading of the work of Johann Sebastian Bach through the aesthetics of the recorder consort. Inherited from the Renaissance, this practice of combining instruments from the same family, of different sizes, allows for singular sonic homogeneity and great polyphonic richness. By transcribing major Bach pages — concertos, preludes, fugues and chorals — the Flutes en Fugue project highlights the plasticity of his writing and his ability to cross instruments and eras without losing strength or clarity.

The Consort Brouillamini, a group bringing together five flutists from the CNSMD in Lyon, produced all the transcriptions especially for this recording. The musicians Guillaume Beaulieu, Virginie Botty, Élise Ferrière, Élise Ferrière, Florian Gazagne and Aránzazu Nieto Vidaurrázaga have carried out in-depth work on the questions of transposition, range and circulation of voices, using a historically informed approach. Far from a simple adaptation exercise, these arrangements continue the very spirit of Bach, a composer who has never stopped transcribing, transforming and enriching his own works.

Bach's contrapuntal writing finds in the recorder consort a particularly fruitful field of expression, where each line maintains its autonomy while participating in a collective balance. The transcribed concertos, inspired in particular by Vivaldi, dialogue with the keyboard pieces in a permanent game between soloist and tutti, continuity and renewal. Flutes en fugue thus affirms a living vision of tradition, where fidelity to the text goes hand in hand with invention, and where Bach's music appears as a material that is always open, conducive to experimentation and rediscovery.

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