HARMONIA MUNDI

(CD) PIANO WORKS
Frank Braley invites us on a trip to America, from Broadway to Hollywood. Here is an opportunity to rediscover George Gershwin's music on solo piano, in arrangements both of his most famous orchestral works (Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris) and of songs from his musicals. Gershwin was more than just Schoenberg's favourite tennis partner! With the utmost elegance, Frank Braley combines swing and classical concert style in a subtle switch of roles, as if the frontier between the two had never existed....
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(CD) BALLADES
The twin peaks of the Romantic ballade. The Romantics favoured autonomous pianistic genres midway between the aphoristic style of the prelude and the vast expanses of the sonata or fantasia. One of these was the ballade, the musical equivalent of the short story or novella. This recording sets the four Ballades of Chopin, a coherent but divisible entity, against the four Balladen op.10 of Brahms, which form what might be described as a 'ballade sonata', composed in a single burst of creativity....
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(CD) DIVINE LITURGY OF SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
The splendour of Orthodox Chant. The most common form in which the liturgy is celebrated in the Eastern Church is that laid out by St John Chrysostom. While its contents are essentially the same, its form and spiritual climate are very different from those of the Roman liturgy. The believer taking part in these mystical events feels himself transported into another world. It is almost impossible for the listener to avoid being gripped by the stirring exhortation to prayer and meditation that is emitted by the almost supernatural power of t...
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(10-CD SET) EARLY MUSIC
CD 1 : Antiquite / The Ancient World CD 2 : Les premiers chretiens / The Early Christians CD 3 : Le chant gregorien / Gregorian Chant CD 4 : Trouveres et Troubadours / Minnesingers & Courtly Arts CD 5 : La naissance de la polyphonie / The Birth of Polyphony CD 6 : Ars Nova CD 7 : Ars subtilior & Pre-Renaissance CD 8 : Renaissance : Sacred Music CD 9 : Chansons / Songs of the Renaissance CD 10 : Renaissance : musique instrumentale / Instrumental Music...
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(CD) PECHES DE VIEILLESSE (EXTRAITS)
"This disc is first rate. Frederic Chiu is brilliant." - American Record Guide "No piano has ever sounded more like a trumpet than Mr. Chiu's as he begins the famous Lone Ranger theme." - The Dallas Morning News...
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(CD) FLUTE A BEC, LUTH ET GUITARE
During the first half of the 17th century the recorder and the lute enjoyed the most widespread favour, especially in England. From Dowland's Lachrimae to the ubiquitous Greensleeves, this recording presents some of the most famous ‘hits' of the Renaissance the Baroque as they were played in the streets and at court....
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(CD) CANCIONES Y ENSALADAS
This recording presents us with the finest chansons and instrumental pieces of the Spanish Renaissance - the Golden Age which, between the accession of Charles V (1516) to the end of the reign of Philip II (1598), saw the blossoming of an incredibly rich polyphonic output. Of the 'Ensalada' Cervantes tells us that it was 'a kind of song in different metres': it was thus called because it was like a culinary mixture: these 'salads' are an Iberian form of the quodlibet and the Parisian fricassees....
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(CD) MESSE DE NOTRE-DAME
As a 'craftsman of the old and the new forge', Guillaume de Machaut contributed to the tradition of his famous predecessors such as Adam de la Halle and Jehan Lescurel in laying the foundations for an aesthetic with an illustrious future, the Ars Nova. His Messe de Notre Dame, the first complete mass cycle whose composer is known, forms the quintessence of the renewal of sonorities and rhythms which marked the 14th century in France and Italy....
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(CD) TRAUER-ACTUS
No composer achieved greater renown in Baroque Germany than Telemann; even Johann Sebastian Bach suffered from his position of supremacy. Telemann composed some 1,500 sacred cantatas, taking the genre into new territories with an exegetic commentary and above all an expressiveness often reminiscent of the language of opera....
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(CD) SONATE E CANZONI
In quest of lost organs. All attemps to 'reconstruct' the famous sonatas and canzones of Gabrieli as they were played at San Marco in Venice have come up against a major obstacle: the disappearance of the two organs of the basilica after his death. One of the principal virtues of this recording is that it has tried to restore the original stereophonic effect of the works as accurately and naturally as possible by performing them in San Petronio in Bologna where two organs very similar to those in Venice have survived....
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(2-CD) 20th CENTURY STRING QUARTETS: DEBUSSY, RAVEL, TOLDRA, ZEMLINSKY
This double album brings together two recordings from 2004 and 2006 in which the Cuarteto Casals opportunely demonstrated its virtuosity and the links between figures as different as Turina, Ravel, Debussy and Zemlinsky. "the players' sensitivity to [Debussy's] shimmering colours and temporal inflections is utterly captivating...I doubt whether this work [Zemlinsky] has ever been so stunningly well played at all levels, and the velvety, in-depth recording is of demonstration quality." - Julian Haylock, The Strad, April 2005 "a sparkling ...
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(CD) STRING QUARTETS
"Search within yourselves and be true" ... or music as a witness to a rule of life: Janacek's only precept is perfectly illustrated in these two autobiographical masterpieces. The subject of the First Quartet (1923) is the conjugal drama described by Tolstoy in his Kreutzer Sonata, even if Janacek is not absolutely faithful to his model. As for the Second Quartet (Intimate Pages) of 1928, it is an extremely elaborate chronicle of a late love of the "old white-maned lion"....
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(2-CD) PSALMEN DAVIDS
A crucial stage in Schutz's development, the 'Psalms of David' also mark a decisive milestone in the birth of Baroque music in Germany. Having returned from Italy in 1613, armed with all the knowledge and experience needed for composing 'new' music, Schutz waited eight years before publishing his first 'remarkable work' (sic) in the field of sacred music. This maturing process led to the full blossoming of one of the summits of musical expression in which each psalm is invested with its own specific character, and in which Venetian novelti...
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(CD) AN ORTHODOX CHRISTMAS
This CD, which includes several first recordings of music by Kastalski, Izvekov & others, draws upon the rich treasury of 19th- & 20th-century liturgical hymnography and carols of the Nativity Feast, which were suppressed during the tragic events of the 20th century and which have only come to light in recent years....
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(CD) MASS FOR CHRISTMAS DAY
"This disc is a welcome addition to the growing number of chant recordings illustrating various repertoires and styles of performance over the centuries. It is not the first time that 17th- and 18th-century organ chant alternatim has been recorded, but there cannot be many discs with a programme of pieces drawn from the old rite of Paris; a splendid rite destined, sadly, to disappear at the end of the nineteenth century. To my ears it all seems to tie up extremely well: the utterly splendid Parisian chant, quite different from its Roman c...
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(2CD) L' ENFANCE DU CHRIST
The 'petite saintete' of Hector Berlioz. harmonia mundi Christmas edition: a special edition of ten CDs exclusively devoted to Christmas! L'Enfance du Christ is not really an oratorio in the traditional sense of the term, yet the freshness and freedom with which it treats its subject make it one of the milestones of French Romanticism....
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(CD) REQUIEM [IN MEMORIAM JOSQUIN DESPREZ]
Requiem: Introitus Requiem: Kyrie Requiem: Graduale Requiem: Offertorium Requiem: Sanctus Requiem: Agnus Dei Requiem: Communio Motets: Laetamini in Domino Motets: Sufficiebat nobis paupertas Motets: Salve Regina Motets: Ne vous chaille mon cueur Motets: Tru tru trut avant Motets: Il n'est si douce vie Huelgas-Ensemble: Katelijne Van Laethem, Julie Cooper, Marie-Claude Vallin (cantus); Marnix de Cat (altus); Jan Van Elsacker, Marcel Beekman, Nick Todd, Matthew Vine (tenors); Marius Van Altena, Jasper Schweppe, Lieven Termont (baritonans); ...
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(CD) LAMENTATIO JEREMIAE PROPHETAE
When Ernst Krenek wrote these Lamentations in 1941, his music had been banned by the Nazi regime as 'degenerate art' and he was an exile in the United States, where he earned his living as a teacher. Ingeniously combining the polyphonic tradition and the language of dodecaphony, Krenek bases his work on the liturgical heritage of the Roman tradition (the Lamentations of Jeremiah often set as Tenebrae lessons) while making his own selection from the words of the prophet....
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(2CD) VESPRO DELLA BEATA VERGINE
A flamboyant manifesto of the Baroque revolution. In the autumn of 1610 Monteverdi dedicated a luxuriant collection of religious music to Pope Paul V, of which the Vespers of the Blessed Virgin is by far the most prodigious work. A spectacular synthesis of Franco-Flemish polyphony and Italian innovations, this impressive monument imposed itself as the standard-bearer of the Monteverdian revolution. But the real miracle is his ability to reconcile solemnity and suavity with the most genuine fervour....
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FAURE: REQUIEM Op.48, ORIGINAL VERSION 1893 - FAURE / MESSAGER: MESSE DES PECHEURS DE VILLERVILLE
Requiem (1893 version) La Chapelle Royale 'A recording of major importance to which all future performances of the Requiem will need to refer.' - Gramophone 'Enthusiastically recommended.' - Fanfare 'Filled with refined sensibility, the performance expresses Faure's personal concept of death 'as a happy deliverance, as aspiration towards the happiness of the hereafter.' - American Record Guide...
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