Lea Desandre, Thomas Dunford – Idylle (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:04:35 minutes | 1,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
French love songs from three centuries, interspersed with reflective lute solos, constitute an Idylle for mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre and lutenist Thomas Dunford.
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Thomas Dunford & Théotime Langlois de Swarte – The Mad Lover (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:23 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and lutist Thomas Dunford illuminate aspects of the elusive amalgamation that is the 17th-century English notion of melancholy. The inconsolable ‘Mad Lover’ of the album title is reimagined as a character from the reign of Charles II. This tale is told through music from the pen of such violin virtuosos as the prodigiously gifted Nicola Matteis. Heightened by the exuberance and abandon common to those musicians transplanted from Italy, the beguiling nuances of this language of yearning and loss continue to echo in the popular music of our time.
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Thomas Dunford – Bach (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:14 minutes | 1020 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Thomas Dunford continues to expand his discography on Alpha with a programme of solo lute works by J.S. Bach, recorded in the ideal surroundings of the Salle de Musique of La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland.
He performs an original composition by Bach for lute, the Suite in G minor BWV 995, as well as his own arrangements of the (Cello) Suite BWV 1007 and the famous Chaconne from the Partita BWV 1004 – the latter piece has a notorious reputation for being (virtually) unplayable, at least on the violin!
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Thomas Dunford, Paul Agnew, Alain Buet, Ruby Hughes, Reinoud Van Mechelen – Dowland: Lachrimæ (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:46 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
After the success of the first fourteen reissues, which restored to the limelight some of the gems of the early music repertory in the catalogues of our labels, here are fourteen new titles to allow listeners to renew acquaintance with further treasures of the Renaissance and Baroque (and even a journey through time thanks to Raphaël Imbert’s album Bach Coltrane), performed by some of the leading interpreters of the genre; most of these discs won one or more awards on their first release. As with the first series, the artists have been asked to contribute to the booklets, in which, with a few years’ hindsight, they talk about their conception of the works and how they went about recording them. The photographers of the Magnum agency illustrate the covers of the series with their work; this time the common design element is the colour yellow.In addition to the 13 titles shown below, the album FIRENZE 161 by LE POEME HARMONIQUE, VINCENT DUMESTRE, will also be reissued.
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Thomas Dunford & Jean Rondeau – Barricades (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:34 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Barricades without borders and without mysteries for this album celebrating just the pleasure of playing together and sealing the friendship of two musicians whose nature and repertoire of their respective instruments are little suited to be played together. Iconoclastic, even insolent, the two young men proclaim themselves “freebooters of joy” on an album far removed from routine and boredom.
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François Lazarevitch, Jean Rondeau, Lucile Boulanger, Thomas Dunford & Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien – Bach: Sonates & solo pour la flûte traversière (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:11:54 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
As director of Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, François Lazarevitch has enabled us to discover numerous treasures stemming from dance and folk music. For the first time on Alpha, he has recorded a solo album, devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Flute Sonatas. His approach to these works benefits from his experience as the conductor of an ensemble, enriched by the particularly varied musical experiments he has carried out.
So this disc offers us an especially interesting and singular interpretation of these treasures by Bach with a rhythmic approach not lacking in swing, and backed up, it is true, by a basso continuo featuring first-rank instrumentalists.
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Thomas Dunford, Anna Reinhold – Kapsberger: Labirinto d’amore (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 59:31 minutes | 1015 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
The ‘Eric Clapton of the lute’ (BBC Magazine) comes back to the Alpha microphones, this time with the soprano Anna Reinhold. Here, Thomas Dunford applies his truly prodigious virtuosity to the eight Toccatas from the first book by Meister Kapsberger, giving us a veritable concert such as the composer himself might have proposed with, in counterpoint to the toccatas, a few of the loveliest airs by Caccini, Merula et al. The beauty of Anna Reinhold’s voice (a young talent noticed especially in William Christie’s ‘Jardin des voix’) has a freshness and energy that bring to mind the young performers at work in Alpha’s earliest recordings. This goes to prove that there still remains much distance to cover in the discovery of Baroque art.
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Thomas Dunford, Jupiter, Lea Desandre, Iestyn Davies – Eternal Heaven (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:25:55 minutes | 1,59 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Classics
Lutenist Thomas Dunford’s first project for Warner Classics is a complete Handel programme with his Ensemble Jupiter, and his longstanding musical partners Lea Desandre and lestyn Davies. The album stems from Dunford’s desire to bring together these two sublime voices and tell a love story through Handel’s most beautiful spiritual music. During the pandemic, Thomas and Lea went through Handel’s entire English-language oeuvre to build a narrative Dunford has dubbed ‘a Baroque West Side Story’. The album features arias from Semele, Theodora, Saul, Susanna, Esther, and more.
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