For the 2024 end-of-year celebrations, don’t miss the show events, but also discover the CDs, Books, items to offer, and all the ideas and experiences to share with family and friends. Each year, the CLASSIQUENEWS Editorial team selects the essentials for the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Here are our 10 favorites to share and offer in each category: CDs, books, gifts, shows… To read our presentation / review of each title, click on the cover image. Each title received the Editorial distinction: the “CLICK” of classicnews.
10 CDs & boxes to offer
OPERA. THE WITCH by CAMILLE ERLANGER… This is one of the excellent surprises of this 2024 school year: the recreation of the opera Camille Erlanger, The Witch (1912), an absolute masterpiece of lyrical and orchestral post-romanticism, brilliantly revealed by the conductor Guillaume Tourniaire for the label b recordsfor which the maestro had already recorded a fabulous Ascanius of Camille Saint-Saëns (previous revelation published in October 2018)… From repeated quotes in period archives, the chief pioneer discovers a name, a work, a writing cut out for the theater and tragic vertigo, worthy of both Verdi and Puccini… as much of qualities of a singular temperament, today finally revealed and re-estimated… First Grand Prix de Rome in 1888, student of Delibes, Camille Erlanger absolutely deserves to be rediscovered. His dramatic demands reveal a personal and original reflection on the theater of Wagner and Massenet… Behind the scenes of a decisive recording and the milestones of the research that preceded it…
OPERA. Joachim RAFF : Samson, world premier. Magnus Vigilius, Samson / Olena Tokar, Delilah… / Bern Symphony Orchestra, Philippe Bach (3 cd Swiss Fonogram, 2023) – The Swiss composer thus merges Wagner and French grand opera (the ballet of V); perfectly mastering the combination of the intimate and the collective, he analyzes the pressure of people and the aspiration of history on a loving couple who are outside of intrigues, calculations, fatality, hatred . Their origin must have separated them or even opposed them; but love conquers all and the Danite, Samson, hero of the Israelites, is struck down and saved by the beautiful Delilah, daughter of the king of the Philistines…
Event CD. MOZART: The Duty of the First Commandment / Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots (Salzbourg, 1767). Gwendoline BlondeelAdèle Charvet, Sargsyan, Jordan Mouaissia… Caravaggio, Camille Delaforge (direction) – 1 cd CVS Château de Versailles Spectacles – recorded in the Crusades Hall of the Château de Versailles, June 2023. CLASSIQUENEWS winter 2024 – We had in mind a landmark recording of the youth oratorio “ Betulia Liberata » (later score, created 4 years later Dutyin 1771), legendary testimony for its coherence, its general momentum, in what seemed to us a thrilling characterization of the figures and characters (Vittorio Negri version, 1976, at the time at Philips). It was then a captivating revelation of the dazzling style of the (very) young Wolfgang, barely a teenager and already carrying a psychological hypersensitivity, crafting both the vocal line and the orchestral writing, with unprecedented subtlety.
At the time we had the sound specific to young Wolfgang, at the end of childhood, pre-adolescent…
Event CD. JEAN-NICOLAS DIATKINEpiano: Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner… LIVE 2021 & 2023 / Recitals in Gaveau (1 cd Solo musica) – From 2 memorable recitals in Gaveau in 2021 and 2023, the pianist Jean-Nicolas Diatkine (born in 1964) publishes an ideal program, through its dramatic force, its chiseled imagination, its poetic construction, highlighting the tenuous, organic connections between Liszt and Wagner… The architectural sense, the finesse of the phrasing, the accuracy of the breathing express, and the force of the evocations and the urgency of the feeling which carries them, towards this final gentle exhaustion which reveals the conquering Liszt, the bard and poet… Difficult to experience a more complete and fair experience. Jean-Nicolas Diatkine delights us from start to finish in this very emblematic program of his art. Masterful.
CRITIQUE, event book. Olivier BAUMONT: From a score appeared to me a drawing, a novel (Bleu Nuit publisher)
CRITIQUE, BOOK event. Patrick Barbier: Giovanni Battista PERGOLESI (Pergolèse) – Bleu Nuit editor / Collection “Horizons” n°106 – Possible adaptability in conjunction with his great knowledge of voices and his proximity to singers (which is also recently shown in the film Il Boemo (directed by Petr Vaclav with Vaclav Luks) ‘acting of Myslivicek, the “Prague Mozart”): as with Mozart, and his vicissitudes in the realization of Lucio Silla or Idomeneo, the specific relationship between composer and singer is decisive and decisive for the success of the work… Moreover, during his short career in the theater, Pergolesi was able to benefit from the best castrati of his time. Until then, we were unaware of his short breakthrough in Rome (thanks to his following opera “ The Olympics » created for the Carnival in January 1735, and one of the best librettos transmitted by Metastase). The text also allows us to measure the relevance of Pergolesi in the comic vein, succeeding like no other in this genre thanks to the perfection of his comedy “ The Servant Mistress » (1733), a miracle of spiritual playfulness which announces the nuanced and subtle grace of Mozart and then Rossini to come.
BOOK event. “RAVEL BOLERO” – Exhibition catalog (Éditions La Martinière / Philharmonie de Paris) – The book remarkably published by the editions of La Martinièreis not only the catalog of the exhibition organized by the Philharmonie de Paris for 150 years since the birth of Maurice Ravel in 1875 (March 2025). It is ultimately through the 18 textual entries [comme les 18 entrées de la partition du Boléro, « diamant à 18 facettes »] a comprehensive summary illuminating the knowledge and understanding of a work that has become legendary since its creation on November 22, 1928.
BOOK event. Arnold Schoenberg: writings 1890-1951 (editions Contrechamps) – To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Schönberg’s birth, Editions Contrechamps and the Philharmonie de Paris are (finally) publishing for the French-speaking reader all the diversity of his writings: texts on music, autobiographical texts, booklets, texts fiction, theoretical or educational projects, texts on the Jewish question, texts on contemporary personalities or on composers of the past… including striking aphorisms.
REVIEW, book, event. ESTELLE REVAZ: The Saltimbanque (Editions Slatkine). Post covid and political commitment… The pandemic has left artists destitute, on the brink, in a terribly weakened financial situation, further aggravated by the inaction and ignorance of the policies in place. The pages which describe the material situation of most of them shock the understanding; It remains unimaginable that a country as rich as Switzerland could have neglected or even mistreated its artistic and cultural lifeblood. Starting from this observation which renews the very exercise of a biography elsewhere so smooth and conventional, Estelle Revaz, after having evoked her childhood, her training, her learning, recounts the rupture imposed by the pandemic and experienced as a trauma, all the more in an established indifference. The text mainly describes his post-covid daily life. The return to the concert, the obligation to honor commitments and programs is accompanied by numerous trials and challenges, which ultimately affect the psychological balance and test the body. Everything is said, described in great detail.
CRITIQUE, event book. François ALU: The Star Prize (published by Robert Laffont) – Rebel against any form of authority, discipline, François Alu who brought entire rooms of spectators to their feet at the Paris Opera, believed for a long time that he would finally obtain his star… especially when he thinks, according to rumors, that he deserves it after having surpassed himself in a solo of all devils (including a merry-go-round of jumps of the “assemblies” type,…) on the stages of the Parisian House, torn off by force of will despite injuries, heartbreaks and various physical obstacles… this episode makes all the value of the “revolt” chapter, the reading of which leaves you speechless. We meditate on the unimaginable strength of the immense temperament of an outstanding athlete. The one who follows the complete course, prepares for each competition and obtains each coveted title, is in reality a fiery temperament, a rebel whose creativity and artistic imagination arouse incomprehension, disapproval or strong criticism. The mold of the dance school and then the Paris National Opera hardly suited him.
Books
