Louise Alder, Tim Mead, Anna Stéphany, Stuart Jackson, Adam Plachetka, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen – Handel: Theodora, HWV 60 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:58:27 minutes | 3,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Among Handel’s seventeen English oratorios, Theodora (1750) is unique. The story is not taken from the Bible, but is about a Christian martyr. The characteristics of the oratorio are very negative: there is no national triumph and does not end in joy, hero and heroine are dying, the community with which the audience identifies is in mortal danger, and the final chorus is in a minor key. As a musical drama, this work can be seen as a direct ancestor of the “Dialogues des Carmélites”. At the age of 65, Handel created a work that was too radical and complex for most of his listeners at that time. Today, Theodora is regarded as a dramatic oratorio that is both deeply stimulating and powerfully moving as an “opera for the thinking person”.
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Anna Stéphany, Labyrinth Ensemble – Berio, Ravel & Falla: Black Is the Colour (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:38 minutes | 955 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Alpha continues its collaboration with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and its Academy, which will celebrate its twentieth anniversary in 2018. We invite you to discover artists of great talent who take us on a trip to Auvergne, Sicily, Armenia and Azerbaijan thanks to Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs, to Andalusia with Falla’s Psyché on a poem of Georges-Jean Aubry, and to the world of Jules Renard with Ravel’s Histoires naturelles. The last-named are recorded in a version for chamber ensemble: ‘Since Ravel gave Manuel Rosenthal to make an arrangement for large orchestra which we found rather overblown, we set out to find a “chasseur d’images” (to quote the title of one of Renard’s Histoires naturelles poems) who could transcribe the work without losing its intimate, delicate aspect. . . . We hope you will be as charmed as we are by Arthur Lavandier’s work, which beautifully conveys the immensely refined timbres and nuances of Ravel’, says the oboist Clément Noël, a member of the Swiss Ensemble Labyrinth. Anna Stéphany is a true revelation, performing this programme with the technique, the sensuality and the emotional impact that earned her a huge triumph in Mozart at last summer’s Glyndebourne Festival.
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