Audrey Bonnet - Arthur Honegger: Jeanne d'Arc au bucher - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Animal Music will Arthur Honegger's dramatic oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au bucher (1935/1944). Lukas Vasilek conducts the Czech Philharmonic, Prague Philharmonic Choir and the Prague Philharmonic Children's Choir. The cast is led by Audrey Bonnet as Jeanne d'Arc and Sebastien Dutrieux as Frere Dominique. This is the first recording since 1975 of Jeanne d'Arc au bucher made with the same orchestra and two choirs. The cast is completed by actors Jean-Baptiste Le Vaillant, Thomas Gendronneau and Anna John Schmidtmajerova, and singers Susanne Bernhard, Veronika Rovna, Anna Goryachova, Kyle van Schoonhoven, Dovlet Nurgeldiyev and Zachary Altman. Jirí Chvala and Petr Louženský are the choirmasters of the Prague Philharmonic Children's Choir. The album is released on CD with a comprehensive booklet in a trilingual English-French-Czech version. The connections between the composer, Jeanne d'Arc au bucher and forces involved in this recording are closely interwoven and, at times, charged with historical and emotional resonance. In 1949, Honegger himself conducted the Prague Philharmonic Choir in the Czech premiere of his Le Roi David (1921). In 1970, the Czech Philharmonic, conducted by Vaclav Neumann, performed Jeanne d'Arc au bucher to mark the first anniversary of the death of Jan Palach, the Czech student who set himself on fire in protest against the 1968 Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. Five years later, in 1975, the Czech Philharmonic, Prague Philharmonic Choir, and Prague Philharmonic Children's Choir, under Serge Baudo, recorded Jeanne d'Arc au bucher for Supraphon. This new recording by Animal Music is based on live performances given between 13-15 February 2025 at the Rudolfinum in Prague. Honegger's oratorio was chosen by Lukas Vasilek to mark both his debut conducting the Czech Philharmonic and the 55th anniversary of the work's performance at the Rudolfinum in 1