Fauré: Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11

Decca Records/Universal Music brings you the ‘Voice from Assisi’: Friar Alessandro.

Alessandro Brustenghi – from the original friary founded by Saint Francis of Assisi, the Porziuncola in Assisi – made the headlines earlier this year when he became the first Friar in the history of music to land a major record deal. The legendary Mike Hedges (U2, The Cure, Manic Street Preachers) and his manager discovered Alessandro whilst in Italy, after years of searching for “the next Italian Tenor”.

Friar Alessandro has been singing all his life. Although music was always his passion, Alessandro received his ‘calling’ as a teenager, and at the age of 21 decided to become a friar. Mike Hedges made the record at the famous Abbey Road Studios, and when Friar Alessandro flew over for the sessions it was the first time he had ever been on a plane.

The album is a heavenly mix of traditional and modern sacred songs, including an original track by Royal Wedding and Christmas No.1 composer Paul Mealor, set to a prayer written by St Francis of Assisi, "Le Lodi Dio Altissimo". Also on the album is a song written by ‘60s singer-songwriter Donovon, "Fratello Sole, Sorella Luna", from the famous biopic of St Francis (called Brother Sun, Sister Moon), as well as a recently discovered sacred area by the Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini (who died in 1835), "Tantum Ergo Sacramentum", here recorded for the first time.

To complete the collection are enchanting versions of "The Lord’s Prayer (Pater Noster)", Schubert’s "Ave Maria", the popular Sancta Maria from Cavalleria Rusticana as well as the nation’s favourite hymn, "Make Me a Channel of Your Peace" – another prayer attributed to St Francis of Assisi. By day, the Friar works in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, welcoming many of the six million visitors to Assisi every year. In his spare time he works as a carpenter, restoring furniture and making wooden lecterns. Having taken a personal vow of poverty, Friar Alessandro will not accept any money from sales of his album and his day to day life will not change. Proceeds will go directly to the Order of Friars Minor for its charitable work.

Everyone attaches particular importance to the music for their wedding ceremony. It is, after all, the key ingredient essential for intensifying the emotional level of a very special day which is to be shared not only by the happy couple but also with all their guests. Choosing the music for one’s wedding is an intimate thing, a second declaration of love between bride and groom. But it is also a bid to express and convey to the young couple’s nearest and dearest, who will be present with them at the wedding, all those feelings of joy and love which cannot be expressed by a mere exchange of "I do’s" and of rings.

And so, whatever your musical tastes and temperament and no matter how you choose to say "I love you" or "I do", you’ll find music to suit you on this double album: from favourite classics to rare gems of the repertoire, from music for festive occasions to more intimate, soulful and reflective melodies, this compilation brings together the most beautiful masterpieces to help you make your wedding an occasion of pure emotion and shared happiness and ensure that you never forget the most beautiful day of your life.

The second Virgin Classics CD from the Orchestre de Paris under its new Music Director, Paavo Järvi, is entirely devoted to Fauré, with his Requiem as the centrepiece. The soloists are baritone Matthias Goerne and, singing the Pie Jesu usually assigned to a soprano, countertenor Philippe Jaroussky.

Paavo Järvi assumed his role as Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris at the beginning of the 2010-11 season and this, his second Virgin Classics recording with the orchestra, is based on concerts that took place in Paris in early 2011. Like its predecessor, a programme of Bizet released in Autumn 2010 (admired by the UK’s Observer for the “perfect athleticism and agility … provided in abundance by the Orchestre de Paris under its new conductor, Paavo Järvi), it is entirely devoted to music by one French composer -- here Gabriel Fauré. His serene, consoling Requiem is the main work on the CD, which also includes three other much-loved pieces and one little-known item.

“For a conductor from outside France, working on French repertoire with a French orchestra is an exciting prospect, and l’Orchestre de Paris is consummate in this music,” comments Järvi. “I discovered French composers pretty early on, as I was getting to know the Romantic repertoire, with Fauré, Bizet and Dukas. Debussy and Ravel came later. They were a revelation for me.” (Ravel, of course, was a pupil of Fauré at Paris Conservatoire, where the older composer taught for many years.)

The Requiem features two vocal soloists, usually a soprano and a baritone. Here, however, a countertenor – exclusive Virgin Classics artist Philippe Jaroussky – brings his ethereal timbre and sensitive phrasing to the poised Pie Jesu. His baritone colleague is the warm-toned German Matthias Goerne, acknowledged as on of today’s finest vocal recitalists. The Chœur de l’Orchestre de Paris also perform in three other works on the CD, the exquisite Pavane, with its flowing melody and mock-Rococo verses, and two early works to religious texts, the touching Cantique de Jean Racine and Super Flumina Babylonis (By the Rivers of Babylon).

Completing the programme is a purely instrumental work, the reflective, but impassioned Elégie for cello and orchestra, in which the soloist is the Orchestre de Paris’ Principal Cellist, Eric Picard.

2010 sees the re-release at mid-price of John Rutter’s Gramophone Award-winning 1984 recording of Fauré’s Requiem. The first-ever performance on disc of the work in its intimate original version – famously re-discovered by Rutter in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris after a century of neglect – it remains one of the timeless jewels in the crown of the Collegium catologue. Hailed on release as ‘the Fauré Requiem of the future’ (Music Week), Rutter’s performance with the Cambridge Singers and members of the City of London Sinfonia has transformed the way in which we view one of the great works of European sacred music, and remains definitive.

After studying music and choral and orchestral conducting in Paris, Vienna and Stockholm, Laurence Equilbey founded the choral group Accentus in 1991. In parallel with this, she created in 2002 the first training ensemble for young singers to be attached to the Conservatoire National de Région in Paris. This led her, in 2004, to create with Accentus the tenso programme, which brings together the finest European vocal ensembles for the purpose of research into and development of vocal art.

Accentus is today an ensemble of 32 professional singers which appears at the leading French and international festivals. The choir collaborates regularly with prestigious conductors and orchestras including Pierre Boulez, Christoph Eschenbach, the Orchestre de Paris, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Concerto Köln, and the Akademie für Alte Musik. Critically acclaimed ever since its first recording, each of the groups CDs has received numerous prizes from the music press, and its recording of “Transcriptions” has sold more than 100,000 copies.

A renowned figure in the world of Baroque music, French soprano Sandrine Piau performs regularly with such celebrated conductors as William Christie, Philippe Herreweghe, Christophe Rousset, Gustav Leonhardt, Sigiswald Kuijken, Ton Koopman, René Jacobs, Marc Minkowski, Fabio Biondi, Michel Corboz, Josep Pons and Louis Langrée. Internationally-acclaimed French baritone Stephane Degout graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon and then became a member of the Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra de Lyon. Degout gained international attention when he made a triumphant debut as Papageno at the Festival dAix-en-Provence in 1999.

Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48 between 1887 and 1890. His reasons for composing his Requiem are uncertain. One possible impetus may have been the death of his father in 1885, and his mother's death two years later on New Year's Eve 1887. However, by the time of his mother's death he had already begun the work, which he later declared was "composed for nothing … for fun, if I may be permitted to say so!" Originally written for smaller forces, the score was reworked for full orchestra by the composer between 1899 and1900.