Les Sabler – Tranquility (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Les Sabler – Tranquility (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 39:40 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © New Vista Records

Nashville based guitarist Les Sabler started his career in Canada with the album Hidden Treasure (1990) initiated by Canadian Television Network documentary titled Lost Treasures of the Titanic. Time For Love (1994), Bridge The Gap (2003), Sweet Drive (2007), Live (2009), Crescent Shores (2010), and Jobim Tribute (2014) mark the career of a great guitarist.

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Les Rugissants feat. Grégoire Letouvet – D’humain Et D’Animal (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Les Rugissants feat. Grégoire Letouvet – D’humain Et D’Animal (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:44 minutes | 774 MB | Genre: Jazz, Free Jazz, Experimental
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Klarthe Records Jazz

Second disc of the tent the Roaring, Of human and animal crosses the question of the border between the man and the animal: from the jungle to the city, rhythms and sounds of the nature to the instrumental melody, of the wild trance with intimate nostalgia. Mixing orchestral compositions inspired by ancient Greek music, black Africa or Bali, and songs on texts by contemporary authors (Didier-Georges Gabily, Romain Maron)

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Les Récréations – Alessandro, Francesco & Domenico Scarlatti: Sonate a quattro (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Les Récréations – Alessandro, Francesco & Domenico Scarlatti: Sonate a quattro (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:20 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ricercar

Alessandro Scarlatti’s Sonate a quattro were published in 1725, the year of his death. With their specific marking ‘senza cembalo’ (without harpsichord), these compositions for two violins, viola and cello appear to be, in a sense, the first string quartets in the modern sense of the term. The programme is completed by a few sonatas by his brother Francesco, the ‘London Scarlatti’, and Alessandro’s son Domenico, who had so thoroughly absorbed the contrapuntal tradition instilled in him by his father that some of his sonatas can also be played in quartet formation.

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Les Pléiades – Beethoven & Schönberg (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Les Pléiades – Beethoven & Schönberg (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:12 minutes | 1,36 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © NoMadMusic

“No one on earth loves nature more than I. I like a tree more than a fellow man.” (Ludwig van Beethoven).

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Les Percussions de Strasbourg – Dufourt: Burning Bright (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Les Percussions de Strasbourg – Dufourt: Burning Bright (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:04:24 minutes | 612 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Percussions de Strasbourg

Written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the percussion ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Burning Bright borrows its title from William Blake’s famous poem The Tyger, published in 1794.

This incandescent poem celebrates the collision of opposites which gives the truest representation of the world and is the source of all creative power. The age-old conflict between “innocence” and “experience”, those “two contrary states of the human soul”, courses through all of Blake’s work, lending his poetry both its tragic aspect and its visionary tone. A non-conformist freethinker who was vehemently opposed to all forms of moral, theological or political oppression, Blake supported the French Revolution and denounced the enslavement of African-Americans. Despite his worldly engagements, he did not abandon his mystic quest, which – in the tradition of Dante and Milton – he considered the only feasible way of articulating the splendour of one’s inner illuminations. The wild and eruptive fury of his visions inspires fear and terror. Yet, from the abyss of misery, mankind can perceive the rise of a burning light, which indicates, without any promise, a possible alternative to the savage rule of force.

Composed as one single piece, like an immense adagio in the manner of Bruckner, Burning Bright’s poetic vision breaks with the traditional techniques of demarcation, with all its contours and closures. The music rises in layers, or unfolds in abundant and meandering surges. The varying depths of the timbres, fading towards an indeterminate horizon, create their own resonant space. Sounds – swelling, diffusing, writhing – blend like fluids or gases. Working on timbre is but the art of retouching. The drift of coloured masses replaces the interplay of formal arrangements beloved of the last century. Friction takes over from customary percussion techniques.

Following Blake’s example, Burning Bright rallies elementary energies: a drama with neither narrative nor anecdote, its unity emerges through telluric rumblings. Not unlike the films of Stanley Kubrick, it uncovers a vast space, which could well become, despite the hopes of our times, a space of eternal confinement.

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Les Passions de l’Ame – Schabernack – A Treasure Trove of Musical Jokes (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Les Passions de l’Ame – Schabernack – A Treasure Trove of Musical Jokes (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:46 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

The group of Weimar cantatas is exciting on many levels. The purpose Bach expressed in his Mühlhausen resignation letter – which became a master beam of the musical edice he built throughout his life – is expressed with an even more seminal vigour, due to the restrictions it suffered previously. Besides the beauty of the surviving works, which renders the loss of the missing ones all the more bitter, it is moving to see the musician engage, with each new piece, in experiments with form, ideas, and the language for expressing the word of God through the most sensitive possible texts. The choice of developing themes dear to him enabled him to afirm and deepen his faith.

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Les Passions de l’Ame – Divina (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Les Passions de l’Ame – Divina (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:03 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

Les Passions de l’Ame release their new album “Divina”. The echo between heaven and earth becomes tangible in the spirited and opulent interpretation on instruments by Jacobus Stainer, the rich continuo and touching human voices. This album crowns the complete recording of all Partitas of the collection “Harmonia Artificiosa-Ariosa” by Biber.

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Les Passions de l’Ame – Biber: Harmonia Artificioso-Ariosa (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Les Passions de l’Ame – Biber: Harmonia Artificioso-Ariosa (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:21:34 minutes | 931 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © deutsche harmonia mundi

The violinist and composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644–1704) was a celebrated Kapellmeister at the court of Archbishop Max Gandolph of Salzburg. Present-day audiences tend to think of him first and foremost as the author of anthologies of spectacular violin music such as his Rosary Sonatas of around 1670 and his Sonatas for solo violin of 1681. But attitudes to these works were initially devastatingly dismissive. In 1927, the eighth – posthumous – edition of Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski’s seminal Die Violine und ihre Meister appeared with revisions by the author’s son, Waldemar, and assured its readers that only “some” of these pieces were of “lasting musical merit”.

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Les Ombres, Margaux Blanchard, Sylvain Sartre, Chantal Santon Jeffery, Mélodie Ruvio – Handel, Marais & Destouches: Sémélé (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Les Ombres, Margaux Blanchard, Sylvain Sartre, Chantal Santon Jeffery, Mélodie Ruvio – Handel, Marais & Destouches: Sémélé (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:17:39 minutes | 1,47 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

Mirare presents another fine recording by the talented ensemble Les Ombres, led jointly by group members Margaux Blanchard and Sylvain Sartre. Baroque music combines violence and gentleness, unity and plurality. This disc dedicated to the myth of Semele and Icarus combines music by Marin Marais, André Cardinal Destouches and George Frederic Handel.

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Les Ombres, Margaux Blanchard, Sylvain Sartre – Telemann: Quatuors Parisiens (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Les Ombres, Margaux Blanchard, Sylvain Sartre – Telemann: Quatuors Parisiens (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 55:48 minutes | 1010 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

After two albums released by Ambronay which have received numerous plaudits, the Swiss baroque ensemble Les Ombres present an album dedicated to Telemann’s ‘Paris’ Quartets: repertoire they played at York Early Music Festival in 2012 in a young artists’ showcase.

Pleased with the reception of his quartets from the Parisian public, Telemann completed an edition of six new quartets subsequently appointed ‘Pariser Quartett’. These contrast with the first set in their decidedly French style. In chamber formation Les Ombres explore the unique style of these jewels of baroque music.

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Les Ombres – Boccherini: Une nuit à Madrid (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Les Ombres – Boccherini: Une nuit à Madrid (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:11 minutes | 1,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

The musicians of Les Ombres pay tribute to Luigi Boccherini. The free and audacious composer was an insatiable traveler and the inventor of the string quartet whose belatedly acknowledged genius has now earned him a major place in the history of music.

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Les Nouveaux Caractères, Sébastien d’Hérin – The Salon of Scylla and Glaucus (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Les Nouveaux Caractères, Sébastien d’Hérin – The Salon of Scylla and Glaucus (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:00 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fuga Libera

The Salon of Scylla and Glaucus is a moment of chamber music, music behind closed doors, closed but paradoxically opened, where one can enter in resonance and lose his way between what is similar and yet different.

Here is the opportunity to pay to a generation of brilliant composers around Jean-Marie Leclair a colorful tribute made of a mosaic of movements, hesitations and passionate portraits, like a musical snapshot of an intimate and instrumental world in contrast to the Parisian opera and theater of the Royal Academy under Louis XV the Beloved.

This is also the opportunity to get together with noble instrumentalists and friends to let them or not take the floor at their convenience and desire… Viola da gamba, violins and cello are joining the harpsichord to make out of a simple keyboard piece an elegant and improvised concert, out of an overture a twirling trio. And these Characters, in turn virtuosos or abandoned but also witnesses of mixtures and fragments of an inspired era, remind us that “the most delicate pleasure is to make that of others.”

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Les Musiciens du Louvre – Offenbach: La Périchole (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Les Musiciens du Louvre – Offenbach: La Périchole (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:42:47 minutes | 1,75 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Bru Zane

Offenbach’s La Périchole (1868) will never cease to delights music lovers of all persuasions. Marc Minkowski – long one of the composer’s prophets – was keen to pay tribute to him with this world premiere recording on period instruments, in the company of the young school of French singers, including the bewitching Aude Extrémo, the dashing Stanislas de Barbeyrac and the hilarious Alexandre Duhamel. Combining fashionable rhythms with the most unexpected touches of folklore, the score is a veritable flood of hit numbers. How can one not be swept away by the insolence of the Seguidilla, the frenzy of the Bolero or the furious rhythm of the Prison Trio? Never before, perhaps, had Offenbach gone so far in caricaturing political leaders – nor used drunkenness to resolve the imbroglio of inextricable sentimental relationships. And indeed, the ‘Tipsy Arietta’ is one of the composer’s best-known numbers. Cheers!

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François Lazarevitch, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien – The Queen’s Delight (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

François Lazarevitch, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien – The Queen’s Delight (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:18 minutes | 1,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

This programme reflects the full flavour and richness of English music and the instrumental and vocal repertory it inspired in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The rhythmic impulse of this repertory sometimes making use of ostinato culminates in the grounds, jigs, contredanses and so on that were all the rage at the time and led to the publication of John Playford’s collection The English Dancing Master in 1651. Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, showing their familiarity with early sources from England, Scotland and Ireland, also emphasise the melodic aspect of these dances, which in the course of time became sung airs the soprano Fiona McGown and the baritone Enea Sorini complete a colourful instrumentarium. Finally, the light-hearted dimension of entertainment is present everywhere in this repertory, which was popular in the sense that it was universally practised at the time, achieving a fame that spread far beyond the British Isles.

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Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien & François Lazarevitch – Vivaldi: Le quattro stagioni, La tempesta di mare, Il gardellino & La notte (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien & François Lazarevitch – Vivaldi: Le quattro stagioni, La tempesta di mare, Il gardellino & La notte (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:32 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

After Scottish and Irish music, airs de cour and Baroque suites and sonatas, François Lazarevitch explores Vivaldi’s music and his cargo of rare instruments. The musette de cour (a more sophisticated form of bagpipe) is used to perform Spring from The Four Seasons, in an astonishing and very convincing version transcribed by the great virtuoso wind player of the reign of Louis XV, Nicolas Chédeville. Lazarevitch himself has arranged the other Seasons for the transverse flute, following a frequent eighteenth-century practice. A new angle on these evergreen masterpieces. The rest of the programme is devoted to other favourite pieces by Vivaldi, this time originally written for flute.

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