One of the big events of 2017 was the opening of the Hamburg Philharmonie. Krzysztof Urbański and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra gave inaugural concerts there that made a lasting impact on audiences and critics alike. On this occasion, the Polish conductor chose to record one of the works closest to his heart, The Rite of Spring: "Stravinsky invented a new language.

En salle de marché le jour et à la salle de concert le soir, le pianiste-économiste Olivier Korber consacre son premier album Double Jeu à Chopin.

These pieces were brilliantly performed by Stephen Stubbs. Recent studies allow us to affirm that the present release, the second to be devoted to works by a Saint-Luc, consists of music, not by Jacques, as it was wrongly mentioned in the first album, but by his son Laurent de Saint-Luc (1669 – after 1708). In addition to two traditional suites, the present programme offers two ensembles of pieces either chosen from certain suites or free-standing – including the mournful allemande in G minor – all taken from manuscripts of lute pieces preserved in Vienna or Prague.

Joel Pommerat writes of his production of the Philippe Boesmans opera, Pinocchio: “Everyone has heard of Pinocchio. He has beome a legend. I have always sought inspiration for my work in the myths of which we ourselves are made. Not only is the story of Pinocchio a powerful one, but the myth of this character is still very much alive, even topical. Pinocchio is a paradoxical character. The moral of his story is not simplistic…

Tharaud returns with a an album of music by Haydn and Mozart, all composed between 1777 and 1786, including Mozart’s masterpiece the Piano Concerto No.9 “Jeunehomme”, widely regarded as one counting among his greatest works. The piano works are cleverly weaved together through the cadenzas. While he performs Mozart’s cadenzas in the Piano Concerto No.9, Tharaud has written his own cadenza for the Rondo in A – employing themes from “Jeunehomme” – as well as for the Haydn Piano Concerto – in which he uses motifs from Mozart’s famous Rondo “alla Turca”, which with the final movement being a Rondo “all'Ungherese”, gives the piece a truly Eastern European flavour.

Who would have thought that the principal source for the music of Padre Antonio Soler was still waiting to be discovered? The manuscript acquired by the Morgan Library of New York in 2011 has proved to be the richest extant collection of sonatas by Soler; 29 of them are unpublished. For his first recording on harmonia mundi, the young harpsichordist Diego Ares reminds us of the powerful impression the composer made on a grandee of Spain in 1765: ‘Fray Antonio Soler produces finer sonatas from day to day.’ Listening to this disc, one cannot but agree: each sonata is indeed a world unto itself.