Bruno Helstroffer – L’âme-son (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Bruno Helstroffer – L’âme-son (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:54 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

It was in the second half of the sixteenth century that the guitar became fashionable in France: it was the instrument of the people, whereas the lute was associated with the intellectuals and the nobility. Henry Grenerin became a page (choirboy) in the Musique du Roi in 1641 and went on to invent a new way of playing the instrument and offer it music full of ‘freedom, mystery and ardour’, says Bruno Helstroffer. In the very first recording devoted to Grenerin’s music, Bruno revives this unjustly forgotten composer and makes the most of his long experience as both Baroque musician and exponent of today’s music. He became fascinated by this seventeenth-century composer, and his investigations led him to the Left Bank of the Seine, opposite the Louvre Palace, where Henry’s grandfather was a fisherman, hence the punning title L’âme-son [French hameçon = ‘fish-hook’, âme-son = ‘soul of sound’]. A saga that has also generated a book and a stage show about Grenerin – the first in the line of ‘guitar heroes’ that was to lead to Django Reinhardt and Jimi Hendrix!

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Bruno Helstroffer – Calling the Muse (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Bruno Helstroffer - Calling the Muse (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Bruno Helstroffer – Calling the Muse (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:05 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

The lute, the archlute and the theorbo obviously belong to the world of Renaissance and to the first Baroque; but lutenist Bruno Helstroffer offers here to his theorbo, in addition to pieces from these periods, some strange incursions into the 20th Century: pieces that he composed himself (or almost from his written-down improvisation, probably), of which one or the other with a sung line or the recitation of a poem, as well as a Gnossienne from Satie which fantastically lends itself to the sound of the theorbo, conferring to this original program a kind of Oriental flavor that is quite spectacular. With Bach, Helstroffer indulges in a harmonic and rhythmic digression on the Menuet in Bach’s First Cello Suite, shifting the supports and the lines in order to only slightly evoke the original from the Cantor. Finally, you will notice some pieces from Helstroffer who is borrowing from India, or from West Africa with the kora, itself a traditional lute-harp, whose sounds are magically evoked by the theorbo. This is one of those unclassifiable and multicultural albums, blending all the eras and geographical landscapes, which will duly intrigue the lovers of rarities, and which has now inscribed the theorbo as an instrument of the modern repertoire.
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