The debut album of the young gambist André Lislevand is devoted to the great oeuvre for viol of Antoine Forqueray. Ambiguity: a word that can easily have a negative or derogatory meaning but which also accurately describes the various aspects of Forqueray’s music and the duality of style that distinguished music in the France of the Sun King: indubitably French, but also strongly influenced by the Italian idiom.

This powerful yet understated recital of modern and seventeenth-century works aims to revisit but also to re-balance the obsession of earlier music with female abandonment and lament. The stories of women such as Dido and Ariadne have been told and retold throughout history. Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston reconsiders the assumed helplessness of those often seen as being left behind by male adventure and success. A recent work commissioned for Charlston from the composer Owain Park further takes up the challenge of giving ‘abandoned women’ their own platform, as well as exploring new possibilities for an instrumental pairing – that of voice and theorbo – that remains little explored in contemporary music.

The theorbo is a sort of big brother to the lute, with a set of long, unfretted bass strings in addition to the fretted courses. This gives the instrument a wonderful, rich mellow sound which is beautifully evoked and captured in these recordings (from 1992 and 1999). Montailhet is an excellent theorbist and the music, too, is a delight.

José Miguel Moreno contrasts the uniqueness of the Angelica with the usual sound of the small theorbo.​ The differences in terms of resonance are indeed amazing, especially since the soloist does well with it to play out the musical lines on both instruments and to make broad gestures.

Early music ensemble Earthly Angels was founded in 2016 by Kajsa Dahlbäck and is affiliated with Vaasa Baroque. Its first release was awarded "Album of the Year 2018" by the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation. The ensemble Earthly Angels performs vocal chamber music mainly from the 17th and 18th centuries. It focuses on a close, embodied relationship between text and music, on finding new interesting music from the early music repertoire, and on making early music meaningful for today's audiences.

Expressing his own cultural identity, guitarist Thibaut Garcia combines Rodrigo's archetypally Spanish Concierto de Aranjuez with a declaration of l'esprit français: Alexandre Tansman's neoclassical Musique de cour, inspired by the court of Louis XIV. Garcia's heritage is Spanish, but he is French, born in the city of Toulouse, where this album was recorded with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and the young British conductor Ben Glassberg. It is completed by four solo pieces by Regino Sáinz de la Maza, the guitarist who gave the premiere of the Concierto de Aranjuez in 1940.

This programme portrays the ‘birth’ of the flute in France in the late 17th century and the following 40 years of its life as a new and fashionable instrument. A famous patron of the arts, King Louis XIV gathered elite composers and musicians to create the refinement, elegance and good taste that was demanded at his Paris Court. From the early petites pièces to more virtuoso suites and sonatas with their ornamented lyricism and grand dance rhythms, the mellow, robust and almost husky sounds of flutes from this period blend and weave around each other like the voices of two singers.

Night is falling. In this twilight of the reign of Louis XIV and at the end of his Grand Coucher, the king is at last free from protocol. He then orders the musicians of the Kings Chamber, to come to him; they are the most excellent in the kingdom. These Petits Concerts which were held in the evening before His Majesty enabled the king to hear his preferred repertoire from all that he had loved and even danced to. Here is the Sleep scene from Lullys Atys, the Sombres Deserts by Lambert, the Mutine by Visee, the Grande Piece Royale by Lalande, A Gigue by Marais, La Plainte by La Barre Thibaut Roussel has gathered around him the finest interpreters of the French baroque repertoire, to give us, as if in a walking dream, the intimate music of this Coucher du Roi. Let the night last, sings Le Camus, right up until Couperins Land of Dodo.

Both of us have grown up with this music from the cradle of our earliest infancy; […] It is music that allowed us to become what we are, while at the same time encouraging us to question things constantly. […] Now, playing the music – because, as we all know, we play rather than make music – has become a part that each of us plays, played here as a double act. Each one for himself, with his instrument as a crucible, and at the same time each of us for the other, since after all we are engaged in a performance.

Le Poème Harmonique, one of the most important early music ensembles in France, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. For this occasion ALPHA CLASSICS has compiled twenty CDs from the catalogue in an attractively designed box. Award-winning recordings can be heard, some of them with an unusual repertoire from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. For loyal fans and those who want to become fans!

Alexandre Tharaud pays tribute to composers associated with the courts of the French kings Louis XIV, XV and XVI. Lully, Rameau, Charpentier and François Couperin stand beside lesser-known masters: d’Anglebert, Forqueray, Royer, Duphly and Balbastre. “I’ve always been attracted by French music of this period,” says Tharaud, adding that when he plays the album’s initial Rameau prelude, “It’s like being alone at Versailles, opening the doors and entering those huge, imposing rooms.”

300th Anniversary of the Death of The Sun King (September 1715 – December 2015) is celebrated by Fred Jacobs and Metronome with the completion of the 3rd and final volume of the Collected work of Music for Theorbo of “La Chambre du Roy” by the French composer Robert de Visée.

Une intégrale de la musique pour guitare de Robert de Visée, par le guitariste canadien David Jacques, spécialiste en musique ancienne, sur une guitare cinq chœurs Claude Guibord, d’après un model Stradivarius de 1700.

This double album offers a portrait of the violinist Amandine Beyer drawn from the recordings she has made for ZZT. The first CD selects highlights from her chamber repertoire, including works by Jean-Féry Rebel, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Nicola Matteis, and Robert de Visée. The second is devoted to the concerto, with compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and Arcangelo Corelli. This programme is an ideal introduction to the multiple facets of Amandine Beyer’s talent and to the grace and joie de vivre of her music-making. It also provides an opportunity to discover one of Corelli’s Concerti Grossi op.6, a preview of the complete set to be released on ZZT in the autumn of 2013.