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Two years after releasing her CD dedicated to Book I of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Céline Frisch now presents the second volume of this musical landmark. Bach compiled Book II in 1744, twenty-two years after Book I. It took until 1801 for both volumes to be printed: from then until the present day they have inspired countless composers. After a series of recordings with the Ensemble Zimmermann she helped to found, Céline Frisch returns to the harpsichord recital, for a programme of this, her very favourite music. Through these preludes and fugues, she reminds us that far from being technical exercises, the Well-Tempered Clavier is a work of pure pleasure and constant renewed discovery. As Robert Schumann declared: ‘You should frequently play the fugues of the great masters, particularly those of J.S. Bach. Make the Well-Tempered Clavier your daily bread.’

For François Couperin’s bicentenary, Christophe Rousset draws an intimate portrait of the composer by gathering the most enchanting pieces of this mysterious musician. Their numerous beauties reveal slowly. With Couperin, we must speak above all of poetry but also of humour, of delicate pictorial qualities and the exquisite refinement of a French aesthetic that, between 1720 and 1730, achieved a culmination in its balance and its freedom in the art of volute and ornamentation, colour and feeling. Couperin has often been compared, quite rightly, to Watteau or Marivaux. An incredible ending for this anniversary year. The tireless and demanding French music guardian Christophe Rousset celebrates Couperin with a sophisticated selection of new and reedited pieces. Solo or with his faithful Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset’s compilation aims at passionate and experienced collectors and musiclovers seeking an introduction to François Couperin.

Byrd’s oeuvre stands out above all by virtue of the diversity of its genres and structural principles. This is clear particularly in his exceptional keyboard music. The influence Byrd exerted on the continental development of clavier music is also remarkable. With Byrd’s Hornpipe the program of Friederike Chylek finally ends, the key element of which should always be William Byrd’s oeuvre. From Byrd to Byrd!

Described in Gramophone as ‘one of the most needed and important recording projects in progress today’, this series has up until now featured the clavichord (on 27 discs), the tangent piano (7 discs) and the fortepiano (2 discs). It is therefore something of an occasion when Miklós Spányi for his Volume 37 chooses to perform on a harpsichord. In doing so he reminds us of C.P.E. Bach’s own advice to keyboard players to have both a clavichord and a harpsichord in order to play ‘all sorts of things alternating’ (‘allerley Sachen abwechselnd’). But the disc – which includes some of the composer’s earliest works – also features one of the very few, if not the only, compositions that Bach specifically dedicated to the harpsichord, namely the Sonata per il cembalo a 2 tastature. In it, Bach makes colourful use of the instrument by specifying various detailed and idiosyncratic harpsichord registrations. Spányi also performs two of the few fugues – in F and A major respectively –that Carl Philipp composed: besides the general shift in fashion away from intricate counterpoint to melodic simplicity, it is possible that he found father Johann Sebastian’s achievements in that particular genre too hard an act to follow…

Упаковка: Jewel Битpeйт: 192 kbps Bpeмя: 496

Упаковка: Jewel Битpeйт: 192 kbps Bpeмя: 451

Rousset is just the sort of player to take advantage with his precise yet silken touch and immense authority in the French harpsichord style, which sees contrapuntal lines delineated with clarity,... — Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2018

Cuiller’s approach is robust and rollicking, appropriately dramatic and alert to Couperin’s occasional taste for spectacle…But it isn’t just the vigour of Cuiller’s interpretations that delights.... — Gramophone Magazine, January 2019

STEREO • RECORDED IN 1992-1994 A favourite musician of King Louis XIV, François Couperin produced a vast canon of works for harpsichord. His four Livres de clavecin contain some 220 exquisitely crafted pieces, which, in Olivier Baumont’s words are “often more enigmatic than one might think, but at the same time sometimes simpler than they appear… They resist traditional analysis just as much as they hold out against a poetical explanation of their titles. The harpsichordist finds himself face to face with a very real magician, a composer both conscious and certain of his ability to manipulate our sensibilities and our emotions.”

Aresprojects an effective blend of intellectual rigour and leisurely reflection in his Goldbergs. His tempos are less hard-driven than some recent rival versions and, commendably, he places virtuosity... — BBC Music Magazine, October 2018

• 120 CDs telling the story of the Yellow Label, sub-divided by genre and including many recordings released internationally for the first time and recordings newly digitised from historic shellac discs • 1 Bonus CD with brand-new unreleased recordings “The years to come” (including Trifonov) • 1 Blu-ray Audio featuring the complete Ring des Nibelungen conducted by H. v. Karajan • Each album presented in spined wallets with original sleeve art • 200-page book (in E/F/G) with extensive documentation including: 1. Introduction by Richard Evidon 2. 4 substantial essays about DG’s history: The Early Years, The Golden 50s, The Star Years, The Future 3. 12 shorter essays about every genre 4. Numerous photographs and facsimiles from the archives of Deutsche Grammophon • Includes six postcards with legendary covers + 5 historic documents A fully new perspective illuminating 120 years of recording history: Deutsche Grammophon’s unrivaled roster is divided in 12 Chapters representing the essential genres within DG’s recording activities. Many genres include new compilation albums bringing together very rare early recordings including many released internationally for the first time and several recordings newly digitised from historic shellac discs: • Orchestral (27 CDs) • Concertos (22 CDs) • Piano Solo (17 CDs) • Chamber Music (11 CDs) • Opera (11 CDs) • Oratorio & Sacred (5 CDs) • Lied (8 CDs) • Archiv Produktion (6 CDs) • Polydor & Light Music (3 CDs) • Avant-garde (4 CDs) • Neoclassical (3 CDs) • Spoken Word (3 CDs)

The harpsichordist Blandine Verlet completes her previous record Couperin with a recording of the 13th and 18th so called “ordres” of the Third Book of his Harpsichord Pieces. Blandine Verlet is known for her unique interpretations: her tempi are sometimes voluntarily slower than prescribed but they are never heavy because she is animated by a healthy and lively breath. At the harpsichord, Blandine Verlet is carried by her writer’s delicate sensitivity. Indeed, the noble programme and a text of lyrical prose of her own match harmoniously in this book-record. She describes with a poetic realism engaging characters in their familiar and everyday settings. Such as in her subtle narratives, Blandine Verlet’s interpretations give a large place to the imaginary. The fantasy of her musical self is never erased in the name of an abstract idea of the work: the life of the score mingles with that of its interpreter.

The magnificent Silbermann organ in St Aurélie’s Strasbourg, and a ravishingly-toned hybrid harpsichord after Ruckers and Duloken, furnish exemplary tools for the job, and Alard’s playing bears... — BBC Music Magazine, August 2018

A musician of searching intellect, generous spirit and formidable purpose, Zuzana Růžičková is one of the 20th century’s most influential harpsichordists. Central to her career, the music of Bach also helped her to transcend with grace the extraordinary adversity she faced during World War II and the Communist era. “There is something above us, near to us, which makes absolute sense, but we don’t see it. Bach tells you: ‘Don’t despair, there is a sense in life and in the world.’” [80] Zuzana Růžičková, who turns 90 on January 14th is one of the most influential harpsichordists of her time. The Bach recordings she made for Erato between 1965 and 1975, now released in a 15-CD box set, are central to her achievement. Like her contemporaries Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911-1984) and Gustav Leonhardt (1928-2012), Růžičková was a major force in reviving the harpsichord’s fortunes in the latter half of the 20th century, but she is also an extraordinary witness to the history of Europe, in particular to the evolution of her Czech homeland, and to the transformative power of music. Zuzana Růžičková was born in 1927 in Czechoslavakia into a well-to-do Jewish family. Her musical talent became apparent at an early age. In the late 1930s she was planning to go to France to study with the pioneering harpischordist Wanda Landowska, but everything changed for her when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 and she was unable to leave the country. World War II brought a series of terrible ordeals for her. In 1942 she and her family were sent to the Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto/labour camp, where her father and grandparents died, but she and her mother went on to survive Auschwitz, forced labour in Hamburg and Bergen-Belsen, where they spent the final days of the War. After the War, music helped her to rebuild her life. Once she had recovered her health, she returned to her studies and decided to specialise in music of the pre-Classical era. Today she quotes her father’s words: “Don’t hate. Hate is something that poisons your soul,” and she adds, “To live with music is really a wonderful blessing.” Her international breakthrough came in 1956 when she won the ARD International Music Competition in Munich and was given a scholarship to study in Paris with Marguerite Roesgen-Champion. While remaining a citizen of Czechoslovakia, where she endured the difficulties and deprivations associated with life under Communism, she made a distinguished international career, receiving many awards and honours. Her interests and influence extended well outside the world of pre-Classical music: she was married to the distinguished Czech composer Viktor Kalabis (1923-2006) and her musical partners included such figures as the conductor Václav Neumann, the violinist Josef Suk and the cellists János Starker and Pierre Fournier. In 1989, during Czechoslovakia’s so-called Velvet Revolution, she participated in protests against the Communist regime. Since the restoration of democracy she has continued to live and teach in Prague. One of her pupils is the dynamic young harpischordistt Mahan Esfahani, who has curated this box set with the team at Erato. “It is my immense honour to have this opportunity to introduce Warner Classics' re-issue of Zuzana Růžičková's recordings of the Complete Keyboard Works of J.S. Bach, a massive project (21 LPs!) which she undertook for Erato in the 1960s and 1970s,” he says. “For me, Professor Růžičková is ‘Mrs. Bach’, the harpsichordist who took the message of Bach's art throughout the world and to listeners of all nationalities. She has seen great upheaval and change in her own life, and brings to this art a message of peace and a conviction in the universality of Bach's music. More than anyone, she has taught me how to be an artist and I am delighted that we are celebrating her legacy.” These recordings have been newly and fully re-mastered in 24BIT - 96kHz from the original master-tapes. On hearing the remastered versions, Mahan Esfahani said: “I’ve been listening to Zuzana Růžičková’s recordings all my life, but this remastering was a revelation: her playing has never sounded so lifelike before.” In addition to the complete works for solo keyboard – including such landmarks as the Goldberg Variations, Well-Tempered Clavier, English Suites and French Suites – the box features: the Brandenburg Concerto No 5 and the Concerto for flute, violin, harpsichord in A minor (with Jean-Pierre Rampal, Josef Suk & the Prague Soloists under Eduard Fischer), the sonatas for violin and keyboard (with Josef Suk), and the sonatas for cello and keyboard (with Pierre Fournier). Throughout the set, Růžičková’s strong musical personality is in evidence: she takes a searching, expressive approach to the score, unafraid of being eclectic and subjective as she strives to capture its essence, and maintaining a rhythmic flexibility within the pulse of the music. In 1971, Gramophone, reviewing her recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, wrote of “her generous response to the music and its variety of character.” She remains grateful to Bach, who, as she explains “played a big role in my recovering from my terrible experiences. He starts with a fugue, and a fugue is something above human suffering … It’s about order. You always feel in his music that God is present somehow. [As we go about our lives] there is something above us, near to us, which makes absolute sense, but we don’t see it. That’s what Bach is about. He tells you: ‘Don’t despair, there is a sense in life and in the world.’”

CD 1 "L'Ile enchantee - Werke von Lully, d'Anglebert, Lambert, F. & L. Couperin, Chambonnieres, Campra, Marais, Le Roux +CD 2 "Moulinie "L'Humaine Comedie" - Vokalwerke; Ballettmusik aus "Mariage de Pierre de Provence avec la belle Maguelonne";Fantasie Nr. 1 +CD 3 & 9 "Pieces de clavecin & Airs d'apres M. de Lully" - Pieces de Clavecin von Lully sowie deren Transkriptionen von d'Anglebert +CD 4 - Lully: Te Deum; Charpentier: Te Deum +CD 5 - Charpentier: Motets pour le Grand Daphin (Precatio pro filio Regis; Sola vivebat; Supplicatio pro defunctis; Quemadmodum desiderat; Gratiarum actiones pro restitua delphini salute); Marchand: Fugue sur les anches; Fond d'orgue; Tierce en taille; Fugue +CD 6 - Charpentier: Psalmen & Motetten (Prelude pour ce que l'on voudra; In odorem unguentorum; Beati omnes qui timent Dominum; O sacramentum pietatis; Pie Jesu; Super flumina Babylonis; Gratiarum acitiones pro restituta Regis sanitate; Magdalena lugens; Supplicatio pro defunctis); De La Guerre: Sonata +CD 7 - Charpentier: La Descente d'Orphee aux Enfers; Tristes deserts; Sans frayeur dans ce bois; Non, non, je ne l'aime plus; Amour vous avez beau; Rendez-moi mes plaisirs; Oiseaux de ces bocages; Quoi, je ne verrai plus; Les Stances du cid; Celle qui fait tout mon tourment; Aupres du feu, on fait l'amour; Veux-tu, compere Gregoire; Beaux petits yeux d'ecarlate; Ruisseau qui nourrit dans ce bois +CD 8 - Charpentiert: Lecons de Tenebres +CD 10 - Clerambault: Miserere; Couperin: Lecons de Tenebres du Premier jour Nr. 1-3