Lucile Boulanger - La messagere - XVII-XXIE siecles, un portrait de la viole de gambe - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This is Lucile Boulanger's first solo recital. The French gambist, universally praised for her natural and moving playing - BBC Music Magazine even described her as 'the Jacqueline du Pré of the viola da gamba' - juxtaposes Bach with Carl Friedrich Abel, a great master of the bass viol and a close friend of the Bach family. Although Johann Sebastian never wrote for solo viola da gamba, we know that he transcribed many of his works for other instruments. So Lucile Boulanger has chosen, for example, to transcribe three dances from the Sixth Suite, 'because it sounds particularly good on the viol, being written for five-stringed cello (a step towards the six or seven strings of the viol?). It is in D, the viol key par excellence, and it's style, already somewhat galant, is reminiscent of Abel... This album gives me the opportunity to showcase the viol as both a melodic instrument - with the grain of the bow, the fragility of tone - and a polyphonic one.'

Brooklyn bedroom-pop trailblazers Beach Fossils' new album 'Bunny,' is a triumphant return for one of the 2010s most influential NYC bands. 'Bunny' is a precise blend of the luscious dream-pop atmospheres they notoriously honed on their earliest projects, the post-punk vigor expressed on 'Clash the Truth,' and the warm, sophisticated songwriting of 'Somersault.' Composer Dustin Payseur peppers the album equally with descriptions of the joy of fatherhood and the existential pleasure of smoking cigarettes out of a car window with friends-'Bunny' features Beach Fossils' most personal lyrics to-date.This is a collection of new favorite tracks for fans of every era of Beach Fossils. Releasing on Payseur and his partner Katie Garcia's own tag, Bayonet Records, 'Bunny' will prove to be the culmination of a decade's worth of growth and experience.

Arnaud Marzorati and his singers, 'Les Lunaisiens', are unrivalled specialists in the popular French songs of the past centuries. Here they tackle two great monuments of 19th-century France the writer Honore de Balzac, and songwriter Pierre-Jean de Beranger, a poet and composer highly famed in his day for his genius in depicting society in all it's social diversity, from the poorest to the very richest. During this period Balzac was also making his sharply drawn portrayals of more than 5,000 characters in the course of his great opus of around 90 novels bearing the overall title of The Human Comedy. Here the 'Lunaisiens' have recorded musical settings of a wide selection of witty and often satirical verse, reflecting all the Parisian themes that obsessed Balzac social climbing, money and greed, corruption, love and betrayal. With the participation of Lucile Richardot and Cyrille Dubois, Arnaud Marzorati and his ensemble give an enthusiastic account of Balzac's extraordinary human menagerie. As Marzorati concludes 'The Human Comedy was greatly inspired by song.'