Fanny Robilliard / Paloma Kouider DEBUSSY - SZYMANOWSKI - HAHN - RAVEL

Violonist Fanny Robilliard commenced her studies at the age 16 at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon with Marianne Piketty. First prize winner of Appassionato Competition 2006 in Caen, and Avignon International Competition 2007, she appeared as a soloist for several performances in France.

After getting her Diploma in the Masterclass at University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, she was admitted in the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischer Rundfunks Orchester Academy. Named by french performing rights society “Adami” as “Révélation Classique 2010”, she has been a frequent guest in many festivals, including Aix-­en-­Provence, Prades, Baden Baden Festpiele, the Nymphenburger Schloss Konzert, Lenk Sommerakademy, Traunsteiner Sommerkonzerte.

Between 2012 - ­2014 she was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic Karajan orchestra academy, which included regular concerts with the orchestra, as well as various chamber music performances and workshops with distinguished artists such as Simon Rattle, Christian Tetzlaff and Mitsuko Uchida.

Paloma Kouider studied with Sergueï Markarov at the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and with Elisso Virssaladze in Florence. In 2012 she joined the class of Avedis Kouyoumdijan at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where her studies were further enriched by Claude Helffer in the field of contemporary music, and by Stéphane Béchy in early music and period performance. Paloma was named by French performing rights society ADAMI as a 'révélation classique', and was an award winner from the Groupe Banque Populaire foundation.

Invited at an early age to perform in prestigious programmes in Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan and Japan, she has never neglected her passion for literature, which she pursues in a classe préparatoire at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.

Alongside her concert activities, and in collaboration with Alexandra Soumm and Maria Mosconi, Paloma founded the association "Esperanz'Arts", which organises artistic events for the socially disadvantaged.

Véronique Gens / Susan Manoff HAHN - DUPARC - CHAUSSON Néère

The soprano Véronique Gens might be thought a natural for the French art song repertoire. But Néère, taking its title from the opening song by Reynaldo Hahn (the reference is to the Greek nymph known in English as Neaera, "white as a fine marble statue, with her rosy cheeks"), is one of just a few albums in the genre she has released. Get hold of it without delay: it's gorgeous. The French mélodie is not a high-register genre, and for a singer like Gens these songs reside in the lower part of her range, where she now brings just a bit of sultriness and smoke with devastating effect. The program includes three composers of the late 19th century who are closely related but contrasting in their individual styles: in the words of annotator Nicolas Southon "the melancholic Henri Duparc, the elegiac Ernest Chausson, the charmer Reynaldo Hahn." You could really dip in anywhere, but sample track 15, Hahn's A Chloris, for a taste of what Gens can do. The playing of accompanist Susan Manoff seems welded to Gens' vocal line, which even with all the voluptuous, erotic beauty has a kind of steely concentration that grows stronger and more impressive as the album proceeds. An absolute gem. (James Manheim)

Marianne Crebassa / Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg / Marc Minkowski OH, BOY!

Marianne Crebassa has signed an exclusive recording contract with Erato. Hailed “splendidly charismatic” by The New York Times, the young French mezzo-soprano is “an absolute revelation” (Forum Opéra), praised for her “luscious voice” (Financial Times).

Within a broad repertory encompassing Handel, Gluck, Berlioz, Debussy and Offenbach, Crebassa has nonetheless made a name for herself above all in Mozart.  An alumnus of the Montpellier Conservatoire, she sang opposite Rolando Villazón in the acclaimed 2013 Lucio Silla at the Festwoche Salzburg, conducted by Marc Minkowski and reprised at the Salzburg Festival the same year. She made her La Scala debut in the same production in 2015; later that year, she portrayed Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro at the Staatsoper Berlin, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.

Crebassa’s first collaboration with maestro Minkowski was in a Salzburg performance of Handel’s Tamerlano in 2012, in which she sang alongside Plácido Domingo. The mezzo-soprano and conductor have continued to explore lesser-known Mozart repertoire together, most recently in a pioneering production based on his oratorio Davide penitente for the 2015 Salzburg Mozart Week, featuring equestrian choreography restoring the stage of the Salzburg Felsenreitschule (Horseriding School) to its original function.

Marc Minkowski and the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, then, were the ideal partners for Crebassa’s debut aria recital recording. For this project, the mezzo-soprano takes as a starting point the Mozart ‘trouser roles’ that have already won her acclaim on stage – Lucio Silla’s Cecilio (originally written for a soprano castrato) and Ramiro from La finta giardiniera and Cherubino. The theme continues with male characters from French grand operas by Chabrier, Gounod, Massenet and Offenbach.

Alain Lanceron, President of Warner Classics and Erato, said: “Since her first appearances in concert and on stage, Marianne Crebassa has captivated the international music scene, thanks to the exceptional quality of her vocal timbre and her innate musicality. We are delighted to welcome this jewel into the Erato family and look forward to a stellar future with her.”

Crebassa added: “I couldn't have hoped for greater luck than to bring my first recording to fruition with Erato. This album is close to my heart – it feels like a natural continuation of the personal and artistic connections I've made since my debut at the Salzburg Festival. This great musical city and the Mozarteum have supported me unfailingly from the beginning, as well as Marc Minkowski, with whom I have shared the stage many times. Let the adventure begin!” (IMG Artists)

Pumeza Matshikiza ARIAS

South African lyric soprano Pumeza Matshikiza is one of today’s rising opera stars. An exclusive Decca Classics recording artist, her debut album ‘Voice of Hope’ was released in 2014. Her second album ‘Arias’ will be released in May 2016 showcasing her operatic roles from Purcell to Puccini and newly arranged art songs by Faure, Hahn and Tosti.

Pumeza Matshikiza opened the 15/16 season singing solo concerts in Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Krakow. In October she made her debut with Sir Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome, singing the world premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Bread, Water and Salt, based on the famous speech by Nelson Mandela. These opening concerts of the Santa Cecilia season were broadcast live by RAI and she will reprise this new work as part of Radio France’s Festival Présence in February 2016, Mikko Franck conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. On the operatic stage Pumeza sings Mimì (La Bohème) and as well as making her role debut as Micaёla (Carmen), both at the Staatsoper Stuttgart where she has been a leading ensemble member for the past three seasons. Her roles in Stuttgart have included Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), Ännchen (Der Freischütz), Zerlina (Don Giovanni) and Pamina (Die Zauberflöte).

Pumeza’s second album ARIAS is a collection of many of the great opera roles in which Pumeza has blossomed: Mimì in La Boheme; Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro; Liù in Turandot; Dido in Dido & Aeneas; Concepcion in L’heure espagnole together with such operatic greatest hits as ‘The Song to the Moon’ from Rusalka and ‘Ebben, ne andro lontano’ from La Wally.

The album also features new arrangements of art songs such as Faure’s ‘Après un rêve’ and Reynaldo Hahn’s A Chloris as well as a Rosa Ponselle favourite, Tosti’s ‘Si tu le voulais’

Also included are arrangements of Sarti’s famous aria ‘Lungi del caro bene’ made by DECCA for Renata Tebaldi in the 1970s and recorded here for the first time since then and an arrangement of the classic song ‘La Paloma’ originally made for Victoria de los Angeles.

Patricia Petibon / Susan Manoff LA BELLE EXCENTRIQUE

The compact disc as a physical object, whether the music is classical or pop, is of interest to very few people nowadays. One response from musicians has been an adjustment to the new climate of downloadable single tracks and bite-sized clips that don’t suffer from being part of a shuffle. Patricia Petibon’s new disc does exactly the opposite. Her program happens to contain nearly thirty tracks, but they all go together as a single performance, and they need to be heard in the order in which she presents them. The program is at its core a song recital, but Petibon and pianist Susan Manoff have invited some off-the-cuff participation from a second pianist, a second vocalist, an accordion player and a percussionist. The structure is something of an after-dinner talent show, with relentless high spirits to start, a passing moment halfway through when everybody gets a little soupy and sentimental as the Pernod kicks in, a strategic regrouping for a few big numbers, and one sad song too many at the end to send everybody to the pile of coats on the bed. At times, there’s a deliberately amateurish quality. The second vocalist is Olivier Py, who is not quite a singer (he is quite a director, having mounted a production of Berg’s Lulu for Petibon), and the percussion parts give the illusion of improvisations that non-musicians might toss in from the sidelines. 

There are a few of the French repertoire’s greatest hits, by Fauré and Poulenc, but most of the music is unfamiliar. There’s a good deal of Satie, including two of the zippy Sports et Divertissements (piano only, without the sardonic words). If Petibon is perfectly capable of singing two un-ironic love songs, she nonetheless might separate them with a Satie can-can. But Satie can also have a side that is quietly aghast, and his brief “Désespoir agréable” makes a perfect piano transition into the set of downcast numbers that begins with Fauré’s “Spleen.” There is a particularly clever transition where Satie’s “Grande Ritournelle” for piano four-hands at first seems to be a gussied-up version of Poulenc’s song “Les gars qui vont à la fête,” but it is the real thing, and the real Poulenc song follows. Among the discoveries are Reynaldo Hahn’s “Pholoé,” a rare song about aging, and the music of Léo Ferré, who turns out to be right up there with Michel Legrand. 

Petibon is having such a good time managing to be loose and crazy even though this is a studio production that she disarms criticism. She can be dirty without being sleazy in the duets with Py. She can drip crocodile tears at the end of “Les gars” but then sing Poulenc’s “Voyage à Paris” without mocking it and deliver two of those quietly devastating Poulenc songs, “Hier” and “Aux Officiers de la Garde Blanche,” with equilibrium. It’s perhaps worth noting that a tiny Manuel Rosenthal song about a zoo elephant who wets his pants has been turned into something impossibly grand by the full company here, and it is funny. But Régine Crespin used to stop the show with this number by underplaying it. Times change, and I love this album. Twice, by the time Rosenthal songs came up, I felt that one piece too many had all that extra percussion. And then twice, just as I do when the cantina tune keeps coming back in Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le Toit, I succumbed unreservedly with a giggle. Madoff, among many virtues, totally gets the deadpan, unreadable quality of Satie’s accompaniments, and the idiomatic English translations of Susannah Howe and James Harding add immeasurably to the considerable enjoyment of this release. (William R. Braun)