L’Odyssée d’Homère m’accompagne depuis l’enfance. C’est en en faisant la lecture à mon fils durant la pandémie de 2020 que j’ai redécouvert, sous un éclairage nouveau, certains passages du poème homérique. Peu à peu, des mélodies me sont venues qui se sont muées en ritournelles obsédantes. Le répertoire s’est constitué progressivement en retranscrivant, durant plusieurs mois, ces partitions intérieures directement inspirées des aventures d’Ulysse.

The Munich Radio Orchestra (German: Münchener Rundfunkorchester) is associated with Germany's Bavarian Radio public broadcaster, but should not be confused with the network's other orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks), which is devoted to mainstream symphonic repertory.

La « Concord Sonata » est un des sommets de la littérature pour piano. Ives en a fait paraître une édition révisée en 1947, et c’est celle qui est le plus souvent entendue. Certains exégètes (John Kirkpatrick, par exemple, ou Jay Gottlieb, avec qui Louise Bessette a travaillé son interprétation) ont bonifié l’édition de 1947 en y ajoutant des détails que le compositeur avait inclus dans les manuscrits, mais pas dans les partitions publiées. Les brèves parties d’alto (premier mouvement) et de flûte (quatrième mouvement) y sont marquées comme optionnelles. Louise Bessette a choisi de les inclure sur son enregistrement en faisant appel à l’altiste Isaac Chalk et au flûtiste Jeffrey Stonehouse.

« Le Rock’n’roll est la plus brutale, la plus hideuse, la plus prostrée, la plus vicieuse des formes d’expressions qu’il m’ait malheureusement été donné d’écouter. » Frank SINATRA Une culture 100% adolescente est née dans l’après-guerre. Portée par le rock, un vecteur de libération sexuelle et raciale qui a fait scandale dès 1956, la nouvelle génération a produit un son et une attitude qui ont ébranlé le monde. Ce dictionnaire chronologique (notices par ordre alphabétique) réunit 98 artistes en 98 chefs-d’oeuvre et perles méconnues. Il permet de comprendre les fondamentaux de cette musique. Musicien, journaliste et historien du rock, Bruno Blum commente et présente la naissance, l’évolution, les différents styles du rock, et ses meilleurs représentants durant l’âge d’or du rock n’roll.

A new name appears in our collection of rarities: Richard Rößler, born in 1880 in Riga, the Latvian capital, trained at the Berlin Music Academy and later highly esteemed there as a professor of piano from 1918 to 1953, was one of those late-Romantic composers deeply influenced by Johannes Brahms. Unlike his Hungarian contemporary Béla Bartók, Rößler remained steadfastly loyal to the worldview of his great role model. When he realized, around 40, that aesthetic developments were passing him by, he limited his output to a few occasional pieces. This is all the more regrettable, as the two newly recorded works here reveal a significant and profound talent capable of creating distinctive characters using traditional musical means.

Le nouvel album, intensément personnel, de la mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti, nouvelle signature du label naïve. Elle y rassemble huit songs envoûtants de Dowland, qui s’entremêlent à quelques chansons pop notoires, de Björk, U2, Neil Young et quelques autres. Le luthiste Vincent Flückiger et le multi-instrumentiste et producteur Fred Chappuis l’épaulent tout au long de ce voyage très lyrique, et joyeusement mélancolique.

Rory Gallagher restera à jamais un des bluesmen blancs les plus rock’n’roll, une bête de scène habitée par sa musique. Le regretté guitariste irlandais entré depuis dans la légende ne sait plus vraiment ce dont il a envie quand vient l’occasion d’enregistrer son septième album.Nous sommes en 1977. Gallagher a récolté de très belles critiques avec son Calling Card sorti l’année précédente. Mais il lui manquait un album à l’Américaine pour satisfaire ses propres désirs de production plus léchée. L’occasion se présente alors et Rory en profite. Le fiévreux musicien et son groupe se rendent à San Francisco en fin d’année pour bosser avec le producteur Elliot Mazer. Un scénario idéal.

Baritone Lester Lynch presents a highly personal collection of songs from Schubert, Brahms, and Mussorgsky. Full Circle: Reflections on my Journey is a musical voyage through the echoes of resilience - a beacon of hope amidst suffering and despair. These melodies are a reminder of how music can transform adversity into beauty and unite us all in a symphony of laughter and love.

Selim Palmgren along with his contemporaries Rachmaninov, Glazunov and Sibelius, was invited for a professorship at the Eastman School of Music and was considered the equal of these composers during his day. In Palmgren’s lifetime his music was published and performed widely gaining much popularity and acclaim. Today he is largely forgotten so it is with Jouni Somero’s project to record Palmgren’s complete piano works that we gain a fuller picture of this fascinating composer’s music. From virtuoso concert studies to the remarkable variety in the Ten Pieces, Op. 79, this eighth volume in the series consists almost entirely of world première recordings.

An unusual and delightful tribute to French music. A young, cosmopolitan and distinguished pianist, at the same time French, Belgian and British, Antoine Préat proclaims, in this first album for naïve, his lifelong attachment to French keyboard music.But rather than being confined by his instrument, or more broadly by his love of keyboards, Antoine Préat actually takes us into a saga; thereby putting an element of mystery into his retrospective.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy continue their acclaimed survey of Mozart’s Piano Concertos with this tenth volume, concentrating on the very early works of the child-genius composer. As an exercise, his father, Leopold, tasked the eleven-year-old Mozart with creating concertos from existing works by (then popular, but now mostly forgotten) other composers. This ‘pasticcio’ technique was in fact quite common in the late baroque and early classical periods, especially for the creation of dramatic entertainment. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet explains: ‘Mozart’s contribution extends only to the orchestral part, for Mozart did not alter a note in the keyboard part of those pieces that Leopold had chosen for him. Excellent pedagogue that he was, Leopold did not only prepare only an exercise in orchestration, but also a procedure to allow his miraculously gifted young son to become acquainted with the form of the concerto.’ The four concertos are complemented by two overtures from Mozart’s earliest works in the operatic genre: Apollo et Hyacinthus and Bastien und Bastienne.

After tackling the sonatas for violin and piano of Bach, Busoni and Beethoven in 2017 – a “thoughtfully determined and subtly interconnected programme” according to Strad magazine –, the duo of Yuuko Shiokawa and András Schiff returns with striking renditions of Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 1 and Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 2. Brahms’s First Violin Sonata in G major, known as the “Regenliedsonate” (Rain Sonata)”, is presented in a lush interpretation and stands in evocative juxtaposition with Schumann’s at times vigorously driving Sonata in D minor. Devoting themselves completely to the music of these close composer-friends, Shiokawa and Schiff once again display their own rare duo understanding throughout this third joint undertaking for ECM’s New Series. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

Ivor Gurney was a poet as well as a composer and was accomplished in a number of musical genres including song. With his intuitive approach to poetry he selected texts widely, from contemporaries to ballads, Elizabethan and Jacobean poets, and even set his own lyrics. This wide-ranging selection includes his masterpieces – among them Sleep and Severn Meadows – with several songs heard in their first recording. Marcus Farnsworth, First Prize winner in the 2009 Wigmore Hall International Song Competition, has been praised for his ‘superbly controlled baritone voice’ (Fanfare). This album is Volume 24 in The English Song Series on Naxos.

The original version of L.A.M.F. (which stands for "Like a Mother F*cker") was marred by shoddy production. This 1984 remix of the album (under the supervision of Johnny Thunders) places L.A.M.F. favorably alongside other New York punk bands from the late '70s. Borrowing inspiration from his old band, the New York Dolls, along with Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, the Ramones, and heroin, Thunders & the Heartbreakers' junkie antics translate well to disc. Songs like "One Track Mind," "Chinese Rocks," and "Pirate Love" are great examples of these influences. Although the Heartbreakers were not as lyrically intuitive as ex-member Richard Hell or Television, the music here is the key. Jerry Nolan's steady beats, and Thunders' searing guitar show that the Heartbreakers were no lightweights. This album, along with his great solo album, So Alone, stand as his definitive statements.

Produced by Jimmy Miller and Johnny Thunders, it is a collection of studio demos and live material. The cover art is an infamous photo of Thunders that was made into posters.