Sonya Yoncheva devotes her second solo album to the music of Handel, showing another facet of her wide-ranging repertoire. Being an alumna of William Christie’s Le Jardin des Voix, the Baroque era formed her musical understanding at an early stage of her career, laying the foundation for her versatile & broad-reaching repertoire. Currently praised as “the best Traviata in the world at present” (Die Welt), Sonya Yoncheva is one of today’s fastest rising opera stars.

Une compagnie de danse hip-hop et un quatuor à cordes, impensable ?
Ce n’est pas la réponse donnée par le Quatuor Debussy et Mourad Merzouki, qui se lancent dans le défi d’un spectacle autour de la boxe ; en y mettant des gants, l’univers de combat se crée. Les compositeurs invités sur le ring sont Maurice Ravel, Giuseppe Verdi, Félix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert et son célèbre quatuor « la jeune fille et la mort », Philipp Glass avec Dracula et Henryk Gorecki. Ce n’est donc pas le Ring de Wagner ! Le parti pris des musiciens a été de participer aux recherches chorégraphiques dès le début du travail pour pouvoir créer et choisir ensemble les univers musicaux.

“Chopin the composer has always fascinated me – multifaceted, complex, a man of paradoxes. His music has huge scope yet at the same time is incredibly intimate and poetic. He sometimes has a reputation for being merely a writer of sentimental salon music; I wanted to correct this through this recording, and demonstrate how timeless and relevant, indeed modern his message is…” Emmanuel Despax

The violinist Gottfried von der Goltz and musicians from the Freibourger Barockorchester bring the scores of a fellow of Händel and Corelli's to life: the composer, violinist, teacher and art dealer Francesco Geminiani. His Art of Playing on the Violin and his Sonatas with continuo are of a typical baroque manner and they reflect his own practice of the instrument. With Geminiani, virtuosity is not an end in itself but it serves a pure musical drama where lyrical flights respond to more delicate feelings.

With this fourth installment of the Stradella Project, Andrea De Carlo and Ensemble Mare Nostrum continue their exploration of the oratorio output, following the recent rediscoveries of San Giovanni Crisostomo and Santa Editta. A pretty dancing-girl at the imperial court of Antioch in Syria, Pelagia, is the object of rivalry between an evil angel, Mondo (the World), urging her to enjoy life to the full before old age destroys her beauty, and Bishop Nonno of Edessa, who with the help of a good angel, Religione, invites her to a life in the service of God.

The Kammerakademie Potsdam, headed by Antonello Manacorda, received an Echo Klassik Award as the year's best orchestra for its complete recording of the Schubert symphonies. Now it is turning to a Mendelssohn cycle and has already received high praise for its recording of Symphonies Nos. 1 and 4: “sparkling and vivacious”, wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, “a sentient being with heartbeat that breathes and never stops moving”.

British violinist Daniel Hope’s new Deutsche Grammophon recording „For Seasons“, unites Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with a dozen pieces associated with the months of the year, from compositions by Rameau, Bach, Schumann and Tchaikovsky to recent works by Aphex Twin, Nils Frahm, Chilly Gonzales and Max Richter. Twelve visual artworks, specially selected to complement the music, are featured in the accompanying booklet.