HARMONIA MUNDI

(CD) LA VOIX HUMAINE
Two dramas for solo woman. A young woman talks over the phone to her lover, whom we never hear; tomorrow he is going to marry someone else... Several times the conversation is interrupted as the line is cut, each time with dramatic effect; and behind this everyday banality, we realise that we are witnessing a veritable descent to the depths with this abandoned woman. Three years after La Voix humaine (his "sad and lovely child", as he used to refer to it with Denise Duval, its first performer), Poulenc was to conclude his collaboration wi...
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(CD) MEDIEVAL ENGLISH MUSIC
Fourteenth-century Europe saw the birth of a new musical art, the Ars Nova. At this time English composers developed their own specific characteristics, summed up in the expression 'la contenance angloise': the famous carols of the fifteenth century were to prove worthy heirs to this style....
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(CD) SCHERZI MUSICALI
1 Fugge 'L Verno De' Dolori (Scherzi Musicali A Tre Voici) 2 Come Faro Cuor Mio Quando Mi Parto (Canzonette A Tre Voci) 3 Lidia Spina Del Mio Core (Scherzi Musicali A Tre Voci) 4 Damigella Tutta Bella (Scherzi Musicali A Tre Voci) 5 Quel Sguardo Sdegnosetto (Scherzi Musicali A Voce Sola) 6 Piu Lieto Il Guardo (Arie Di Diversi Raccolte Da Alessandro Vicenti) 7 Et E Pur Dunque Vero (Scherzi Musicali A Voce Sola) 8 Si Dolce E 'L Tormento (Quarto Scherzo Delle Ariose Vaghezze) 9 Clori Amorosa (Scherzi Musicali A Tre Voci) 10 Ecco Di Dolce Ragg...
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(CD) CHANTS DE LA CATHEDRALE DE BENEVENTO
Office de l'Adoration de la Croix: Antienne, "Otin to stauron" - "O quando in cruce" Office de l'Adoration de la Croix: antienne, "Proskinumen ton stauron" - "Adoramus crucem tuam" - Psaume 22 : "Deus Deus meus respice in me" Office de l'Adoration de la Croix: Antienne, Ton stauron sou proskinumen" - "Crucem tuam" - Psaume 148 : "Laudate Dominum" Office de l'Adoration de la Croix: Antienne, "Enumen sou Xriste" - "Laudamus te Christe" - Psaume 149 : "Cantate Domino canticum novum" Office de l'Adoration de la Croix: Monition, "Panta ta ethni...
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(CD) CONCERTI GROSSI OP.6
The concerto grosso, invented in Italy by Stradella and Corelli, spread rapidly all over Europe. But Handel's creative innovations surpass the Italian model, and are outstanding for their richness of style and expressive power....
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(CD) LAMENTAZIONI PER LA SETTIMANA SANTA
Music-lovers are by now familiar with the Tenebrae Lessons, the settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah sung throughout Catholic Europe on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings of Holy Week. The Renaissance had delighted in them, and France under Louis XIV was to cultivate the genre to excess. In Italy, the fashion for Lamentazioni belongs to the first half of the 17th century, as witness the 23 cycles of manuscript Q43 of the Museo musicale in Bologna, all by composers active in Rome at the time. Maria Cristina Kiehr and Concerto Soave...
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(CD) LAGRIME DI SAN PIETRO
This cycle of 21 spiritual madrigals for seven voices is at once the swansong of the most famous composer of his time, who died in 1594 at the age of 62 just three weeks after dedicating the work to the Pope, and the highpoint of Counter-Reformation polyphony. More than four centuries later, the 'Tears of St Peter' still have the power to move every sensitive listener. This title was released for the first time in 1994....
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(CD) MISSA AD PLACITUM, MAGNIFICAT
Claude Le Jeune was Composer to the Chamber of King Henry IV of France. This royal recognition crowned the career of one of the great masters of the late French Renaissance. Although he owed a great deal to the Franco-Flemish School, nothing prevented him from developing a truly original style imbued with an astonishing theatrical sense - to the point that certain surprise-effects presage works by Haydn....
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(CD) LECONS DE TENEBRES DU MERCREDY SAINCT
This budget-priced reissue is one of the crowning glories of harmonia mundi's Rene Jacobs catalog. It features the Lamentations of Jeremiah as envisioned by Marc-Antoine Charpentier - the most Italianate composer of the Grand Siecle. Released for the first time in 1986, this recording has become established as the essential benchmark in this repertory....
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(CD) LA SPAGNA
The cycle of 125 variations that Costanzo Festa composed on the 37-note cantus firmus La Spagna is conceived on a scale unique during the Renaissance, and may justly be described as a compositional tour de force. Comparisons with Johann Sebastian Bach s 'Goldberg Variations' are inevitable. This CD offers a first recording of 32 of the variations in instrumental performances using two differently constituted ensembles. Huelgas-Ensemble, Paul Van Nevel (Conductor)...
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(CD) VIOLIN CONCERTO BWV 1052, DOUBLE CONCERTOS
Violin Concerto BWV1052 Double Concertos for harpsichords, recorders, oboe and violin...
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(CD) MAGNIFICAT BWV 243a, CHRISTMAS CANTATA BWV 63, CANTATA "CHRISTEN, ATZET DIESEN TAG"
This budget-priced reissue featuring Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent recreates the festival of Christmas as it was celebrated in Leipzig under the direction of Johann Sebastian Bach. A highlight of the recording is the original version of the celebrated Magnificat, which includes four extra movements. This title was released for the first time in 2003....
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(CD) (CD) BRAHMS: SYMPHONY No.4 / SCHOENBERG: VARIATIONS Op.31
The spirit of the variation. A little over forty years separate Brahms's Fourth Symphony from Schoenberg's Variations op.31: little enough for two sound-worlds so radically divergent! Yet a certain conscious classicism in the handling of variation forms (the chaconne in Brahms, balanced serialism in Schoenberg) and a common affiliation - to Bach - link these masterpieces of Romanticism and dodecaphony. Is there really such a sharp divide between them?...
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(CD) SYMPHONY No.9
Symphonie no.9 op.125 en re mineur Melanie Diener: soprano Petra Lang: mezzo-soprano Endrik Wottrich: tenor Dietrich Henschel, basse La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent, Orchestre des Champs-Elysees Dir. Philippe Herreweghe...
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(CD) MIRACLES OF COMPOSTELA
Since the late twelfth century, the Cathedral of Santiago in Compostela has possessed a manuscript entitled Jacobus (or Codex Calixtinus). How it found its way to Compostela is not known for certain, but it is undoubtedly a French product, probably compiled or written in Cluny around 1150. Although they represent a mere ten percent of the music in Jacobus, the polyphonic works have received attention from scholars because they are among the earliest such pieces to have been written down. But the notation in Jacobus is ambiguous as to rhyth...
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(CD) WOLCUM YULE
Anonymous 4's Johanna Maria Rose shows that she knows a thing or two about arranging for the voices she's been singing with for the past couple of decades, contributing her own very pleasing takes on the carols 'The holly and the ivy', 'Grene growith the holy', and 'I saw three ships'. Highlights are many, but include Peter Maxwell Davies' uniquely affecting 'A Calendar of Kings', basically a fanciful harmonic journey through the wondrous imagery of George Mackay Brown's poem - a mystical trip not through Eastern landscapes but rather thro...
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(CD) DICHTERLIEBE op.48
This recording offers two of Schumann's most celebrated song cycles, to poems by Heine and Eichendorff. Digging right down to the poet's unconscious mind, Schumann reveals here an accomplished art of poetic evocation and commentary. A marvellous plunge into the dream-like universe of German Romanticism. This title was released for the first time in 2002....
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(CD) O GEMMA, LUX
A sumptuous farewell to the musical Middle Ages. "Certain disciples of the new school hasten without rest, inebriating men's ears without appeasing them, miming with gestures that which they cause to be heard." These were the words used in 1324 by Pope John XXII to castigate the "so-called" progress which none the less paved the way to a prodigious development in the rhythmic notation and the polyphonic execution of musical compositions (Ars Nova). A century later this system based on learned mathematical rules reached a peak of refinement...
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(CD) STABAT MATER - MOTETS
Josquin: the first name that comes to mind when one discusses the masters of the Renaissance. In this now classic recording, Philippe Herreweghe offers an exceptionally rich portrait of his music, midway between the liturgical (Stabat Mater) and the quasi-secular (certain motets). Canons, echo and repetitive effects, all manner of counterpoint: every element in this music contributes to a valorisation of the sung text which was soon to culminate in the late 16th-century madrigal....
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(CD) LAMENTO DELLA NINFA
At the turn of the 17th century, Italian music as a whole embarked on a new path, that of the 'seconda prattica'. The madrigals of Monteverdi were the driving force of this development, especially those of the seventh and eighth books from which the works on this CD are taken. Here is a chance to discover or rediscover the famous Lamento della Ninfa and other masterpieces under the direction of William Christie....
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