La Lira di Orfeo – Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, HWV 72 (Reconstr. R. Pe & F. Longo) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:23:11 minutes | 1,49 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Glossa
For a production at the King’s Theatre, Handel had created a mixed version of his Italian serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo HWV 72 and the English masque Acis and Galatea HWV 49a, which was performed semi-staged several times in 1732 with a star cast (including Senesino) to great acclaim. For today’s ears, the musically attractive version HWV 49b suffers not least from the mixture of English and Italian text. In keeping with Handel’s intentions, a purely Italian version was created here with additions from Italian works by the composer. The result is as convincing musically as it is scenically and would have deserved its own number in the catalogue of works.
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La Gioia Armonica, Jürgen Banholzer – Reutter: Portus Felicitatis (Motets & Arias for the Pantaleon) (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:09:34 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée
Today almost entirely forgotten, Reutter has been the most successful composer of opera in Vienna during the 1730s, and the single and most influential composer of church music in Vienna for three decades, enjoying the estimation of both Charles VI and Maria Theresia. The son of a court organist and music director at St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Reutter studied with Antonio Caldara and, having returned from a period of study in Italy, was nominated imperial court composer in Vienna in 1730. He became first director of music at St. Stephen’s im 1738, second Hofkapellmeister in 1747 and first Hofkapellmeister in 1769. His influential position in the musical life of Vienna led to conflicts with Durazzo and Gluck which escalated in 1761. Reutter is one of the few composers who composed for the Pantaleon (salterio). As Caldara had done before him, Reutter used the pantaleon as an obbligato instrument in several arias of his operas and oratorios. Our programme features four arias for obligato salterio. With this album La Gioia Armonica will continue the endeavours of its first album for RAMÉE, dedicated to original compositions for the pantaleon by Antonio Caldara (RAM0405).
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La Gioia Armonica – Per il Salterio (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:39 minutes | 1,64 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ramée
Today there are different types of the instrument known in German-speaking countries as the Hackbrett, mainly associated with local traditional music, such as the cimbalom in Eastern Europe, the santūr in Persia, etc. The history of European music has also known moments when this type of instrument was appreciated in art music, thanks especially to its sonority, which predestined it for the so-called ‘sensitive’ (empfindsam) style. This recording is devoted to the salterio, the Italian form of the instrument, for which a considerable number of works were composed in the eighteenth century. Margit Übellacker and Jürgen Banholzer present a selection of recordings of sonatas for salterio and basso continuo. These reflect the galant style of north Italy in the second half of the eighteenth century.
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La fonte musica – Zacara da Teramo: Enigma Fortuna (Complete Works) (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:57:53 minutes | 3,73 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
In this recording entitled Enigma Fortuna, the ensemble La Fonte Musica, directed by Michele Pasotti, aims to shed light on the mysterious and eccentric personality of Antonio Zacara da Teramo (1355-1416). A contemporary of Boccaccio, Donatello and Brunelleschi, this composer from the Abruzzi region could almost be likened to a sort of musical Hieronymus Bosch, for the texts he set to music conjure up a ‘topsy-turvy universe’ where the obscene, the imaginary and the grotesque go hand in hand. In his ballata Amor ne tossa he writes ‘Let him understand me who can, for I understand myself’, foreshadowing the proud egotism of the Romantic artists who were to come 400 years after him. With this four-CD set presenting the world premiere of Zacara’s complete works, La Fonte Musica offers us an initial approach to understanding his music. And thereby, through the timeless character of art, to understanding a so-called ‘renascent’ era that seems as ‘topsy-turvy’ as our own.
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La Follia, Orchestre de chambre d’Alsace, Hugues Borsarello – Mozart: 5 Violin Concertos (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:50:54 minutes | 1,92 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ARTIES RECORDS
A Violin which sings, an major interpretation of Mozart. The violinist Hugues Borsarello, accompanied by Follia Orchestre de chambre of Alsace, proposes us a quite new version where he takes to the extreme his search for the purity and for the perfection of sound. Heattempts to develop what seems essential to him in the art of interpreting: the speech, the nature of the phrasing and the sound. Deconstruct to overtake, not avoid the technical stake but rethink it.
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La Folia Barockorchester – Rediscovered Treasures from Dresden (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:07 minutes | 933 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Music
Sony Classical is delighted to bring you the world premiere recording of Baroque concertos by anonymous composers associated with the legendary Dresdner Hofkapelle. The concertos are part of the infamous “Schrank II” (Cabinet II) archive in the Dresdner Court Church destroyed in World War II. This collection includes instrumental works that have survived in manuscript form and that belonged for the most part to the Court Orchestra’s leader, Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755). Robin Peter Müller has singled out six of the finest violin concertos from Schrank II’s collection, some of which he has reconstructed for the purposes of the present recording with his period-instrument ensemble. One of the concertos – in D major – reveals striking similarities to Vivaldi’s violin concertos, featuring, as it does, solo passages lifted straight from Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto RV 208 (“Grosso Mogul”). The result is a remarkable recording notable for its dynamism, virtuosity and musical variety.
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La Festa Musicale – Francesco Venturini: Concerti (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:17 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © audite Musikproduktion
The Concerti of the violinist-composer Francesco Venturini (c.1675-1745) are a real discovery – melodious, virtuosic, elegant and dance-like, combining Italian and French stylistic elements to form a “mixed taste”, as Telemann described this “mélange”. Inspired by the pulsating cultural and intellectual life at the Hanoverian court, Venturini wrote ambitious orchestral music full of joie de vivre, defined by numerous concertato passages for both wind and string instruments. His works feature a rich diversity of – sometimes unusual – colours: as his concerto soloists, he chooses not only combinations of one or two oboes, recorders and violins, but also two bassoons and two cellos, or even an oboe, two recorders and violin – the latter being a combination reminiscent of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos which were to be written a few years later.
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La Femme – Paradigmes (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 54:31 minutes | 624 MB | Genre: Indie Pop, Psychedelic Pop, Surf Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Disque Pointu
Few bands have invigorated French pop like La Femme over the last decade, and in 2021, they’re coming to make all of our lives better. Paradigmes, their much-awaited third album, offers a shift in how we see the world, a kaleidoscopic vortex to a different, more vibrant dimension. After Psycho Tropical Berlin in 2013 and Mystère in 2016 which both reached Gold status in France and got them to play hundreds of shows around the world, the Paris-based, Biarritz band continue to dazzle listeners with their new record. Within this album of beautifully-curated electropop you will hear everything from coldwave to yéyé, Kraftwerk to the Velvet Underground, all distilled and sequenced and psychedelicized so that it sounds uniquely La Femme. The title track is a brassy blast of sizzling electro that imbues the spirit of flappers and philosophers, cabaret and art deco and Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis, all underpinned with a touch of lyrical melancholy. Paradigmes is an album that lives in the moment, even if that moment is a challenge right now. Its fantastical voyages will undoubtedly provide an escape into a world beyond our own.
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La Femme – Mystère (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:11:38 minutes | 804 MB | Genre: French Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Disque Pointu
La Femme is a French krautrock and psych-punk rock band established by keyboard player Marlon Magnée and guitarist Sacha Got in Biarritz. Many members joined in later including bass player Sam Lefevre, drummer Noé Delmas and Lucas Nunez from Paris. The group was named La Femme in 2010. The band got to know the lead singer Clémence Quélennec on the internet. Other members include Clara Luciani, Jane Peynot and Marilou Chollet. The band’s music is described as synthetic and hypnotic influenced by Velvet Underground, Kraftwerk and mix of coldwave, punk and yéyé. “Mystère” is the band’s second full-lenght album.
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La Compagnia del Madrigale – Rore: Vieni dolce Himineo & Other Madrigals (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:09:25 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Glossa
With ‘Vieni, dolce Imeneo’, La Compagnia del Madrigale make another important stop on their compelling journey across the territory of Italian secular song with a disc devoted to one of the most significant, yet these days somewhat bypassed, composers: Cipriano de Rore.
De Rore was a Fleming who enjoyed great success notably in the Italian courts of Ferrara and Parma – but with a prestige which extended up and across Europe.
He composed in many genres but it is the secular madrigal – recorded here – where his skill was most valued, for example in creating extended and expressive melodic lines coupled with innovatory preechoes of the seconda pratica so triumphantly expressed – albeit amidst great criticism – by Claudio Monteverdi.
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La Compagnia del Madrigale – Lagrime d’amante (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:16:36 minutes | 1,21 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Glossa
With “Lagrime d’amante”, La Compagnia del Madrigale, so accomplished with 16th- and 17th century Italian music and words, turns its attention afresh to the music of Claudio Monteverdi. This new Glossa release, recorded in Cumiana, outside Turin, faithfully conveys the beauty of the ensemble’s vocal blend in a selection of five-part compositions drawn from the Monteverdi of Cremona, Mantua and Venice, but centring on that cornerstone of his art, the Sixth Book.
The act of singing whilst weeping – as Marco Bizzarini points out in his booklet essay – is somewhat unfeasible, but time after time Monteverdi strove to overcome that improbability by his music, often calling upon the best Italian poetry of the time: here, the fabulously vivid imagery of Torquato Tasso, Battista Guarini and Petrarch are well served by Monteverdi’s musical response.
La Chimera – Fuga y misterio (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 54:41 minutes | 549 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © La Musica
Simone Rubino and Eduardo Egüez come back together to give life to a new adventure that brings together two worlds united by counterpoint’s technique, which Bach and Piazzolla were two masters, three centuries apart. Simone Rubino with his solar Italianism and Eduardo Egüez, a native like Piazzolla of Buenos Aires, offer us a bouquet of marvellous pieces.
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La Chapelle Harmonique & Valentin Tournet – Bach: Magnificat (Live at Chapelle Royale, Château de Versailles) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:11 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Château de Versailles Spectacles
Bach celebrated his first Christmas in Leipzig (1723) in style. On the morning of 25 December, his cantata Christen, ätzet diesen Tag, BWV 63 resounded in the church of Saint Thomas. It opens and closes on a great choir, a perfect prelude to the Magnificat, BWV 243A played at afternoon vespers.
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La Chapelle de Québec Choir & Bernard Labadie – The Road To Christmas (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:47:20 minutes | 1,57 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Les Disques ATMA Inc.
For Bernard Labadie, Le Chemin de Noël is the realization of a great dream inspired by the tradition of the annual Christmas concerts at the Chapel of King’s College in Cambridge, England. Named after the beloved annual concerts that Labadie has conducted in Quebec since 2016, Le Chemin de Noël is the conductor’s deeply personal reflection on the meaning on Christmas.
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La Chanson de Fribourg & Jérémie Zwahlen – Le pays d’où je viens, La Chanson de Fribourg (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 17:21 minutes | 165 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Claves Records
A legendary Swiss ensemble created in Fribourg in 1952, La Chanson de Fribourg is back on the recording market after an absence of 50 years!
La Chanson de Fribourg presents with originality a sparkling music, born in the heart of a country where singing is almost as natural as breathing.
Its repertoire includes pieces written by composers from Fribourg. Thus, the beautiful traditional melodies of Abbé Joseph Bovet, the original pieces of its founder-director Pierre Kaelin, those of Pierre Huwiler or the arrangements of the current conductor, Jérémie Zwahlen, follow one another. (Patrick Peikert)
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