Isabelle Faust, Anne-Katharina Schreiber, Antoine Tamestit, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov – Schumann: Piano Quartet – Piano Quintet (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Isabelle Faust, Anne-Katharina Schreiber, Antoine Tamestit, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov – Schumann: Piano Quartet – Piano Quintet (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 54:40 minutes | 1,92 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

In his Piano Quartet and Quintet, Schumann revisited the frameworks inherited from Schubert and Beethoven to create astonishingly innovative structures. Their grandiose musical and emotional gestures place these works among his supreme achievements. The prestigious artists assembled here, with their extensive experience of performing Schumann’s chamber music and concertos, do full justice to his imaginative world.

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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov – Chopin, Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonatas (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov - Chopin, Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonatas (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov – Chopin, Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonatas (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:08 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

After Beethoven, Alexander Melnikov and Jean-Guihen Queyras now turn to two more giants of the repertory. Chopin’s Cello Sonata, his last work published in his lifetime, seems almost like a testament, sombre and tormented – a world away from the radiance and surging lyricism of the youthful work by Rachmaninoff that it inspired. These two masterpieces by composers from the two chronological extremities of Romanticism, both pianists above all, are ideally placed in perspective here.
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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans – Haydn: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 – Monn: Cello Concerto (Remastered) (2004/2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Freiburger Barockorchester, Petra Müllejans – Haydn: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 – Monn: Cello Concerto (Remastered) (2004/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:08:40 minutes | 697 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

In 2004, Jean-Guihen Queyras and the Freiburger Barockorchester offered us a prodigious interpretation of Haydn’s two cello concertos, coupled with a rare concerto by Georg Matthias Monn, a pioneer of the genre. A version now recognized as a landmark in the discography.

“A sense of seemingly effortless bravura to [Queyras’] playing, as well as superb technical control and intelligence. An extremely attractive proposition.” – International Record Review

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Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov, Pablo Heras-Casado, Freiburger Barockorchester – Schumann: Violin Concerto, Piano Trio No.3 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov, Pablo Heras-Casado, Freiburger Barockorchester – Schumann: Violin Concerto, Piano Trio No.3 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:36 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

In the autumn of 1851 Schumann composed, in rapid succession, the two violin sonatas and, in the space of just seven days from 2 to 9 October, the Piano Trio no.3, Op.110. As always during his work, Schumann was oblivious to everything around him, neglected social obligations, and isolated himself – even from Clara. ‘Robert is working very assiduously on a trio for piano, violin, and cello,’ she confided to her diary, ‘but he won’t let me hear anything of it until he has quite finished it – all I know is that it’s in G minor.’

This trio, like all his other chamber works with piano, was tailor-made for Clara to play and right from the first rehearsal session in the domestic circle she went into a veritable frenzy of delight: ‘It is original, absolutely full of passion, especially the scherzo, which sweeps one away to the wildest depths’, Just a little bit of that same enthusiasm would probably have spared the Violin Concerto a great deal of opprobrium: Clara witheld the score, as did the dedicatee, Joachim. It was finally premiered in Berlin on 26 November 1937, more than 80 years after it was composed, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Karl Böhm and the violinist Georg Kulenkampff. Yehudi Menuhin had the privilege of making the first commercial recording, produced in the following year, 1938, with the New York Philharmonic under its British principal conductor John Barbirolli.

This first volume in a trilogy comprising the complete concertos and piano trios of Schumann brings together two late and unjustly neglected works. The instigators of the project, Isabelle Faust, Alexandre Melnikov and Jean-Guihen Queyras, champion their cause with a force of conviction and a choice of instruments that restore the delicate transparency and subtlety of their textures. The next release will be of the Piano Concerto and Piano Trio No. 2.

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Midori, Martin Grubinger, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Peter Eötvös – Eötvös: DoReMi, Speaking Drums & Cello concerto grosso (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Midori, Martin Grubinger, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Peter Eötvös – Eötvös: DoReMi, Speaking Drums & Cello concerto grosso (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:11:02 minutes | 720 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

In November 2014, Radio France inaugurated its new auditorium with a programme giving carte blanche to one of the most eminent composers of our time, Peter Eötvös, who was then celebrating his seventieth birthday. On this occasion, three of his concertos were given their world premiere recordings under his direction with three soloists of the front rank. The violin concerto DoReMi, played here by its dedicatee Midori, is followed by Cello Concerto Grosso, a triangular dialogue between the solo cello, the cello section, and the full orchestra. The spectacular Speaking Drums concludes the programme on a highpoint: the orchestra (around forty musicians) prolongs the performance – theatrical as much as musical – of the percussionist, who declaims texts by the poets Sándor Weöres (in Hungarian) and Jayadeva (in Sanskrit) and moves from point to point on the platform, thus creating links with various instruments of the orchestra. The stunning Martin Grubinger lends his voice and his percussion playing to this piece, which ends in highly virtuosic polyrhythm.

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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Sokratis Sinopoulos, Bijan Chemirani, Keyvan Chemirani – Thrace (Sunday morning Sessions) (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Sokratis Sinopoulos, Bijan Chemirani, Keyvan Chemirani - Thrace (Sunday morning Sessions) (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Sokratis Sinopoulos, Bijan Chemirani, Keyvan Chemirani – Thrace (Sunday morning Sessions) (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:03:07 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

The ancient Indo-European civilization of Thrace was adventurous, inquisitive and open to exchange with other cultures. These key principles of the Thracians serve as a beautiful metaphor for this ensemble featuring cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras. From the captivating percussion of the Chemirani brothers (who grew up alongside Queyras on the hillsides of Provence) to the magical lyra of Sokratis Sinopoulos, these Sunday morning sessions open gateways into undiscovered musical worlds. Here contemporary exploration, improvisation and the traditional music of the Mediterranean converge in one powerful and irresistible spirit.
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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Atlas Ensemble, Ed Spanjaard – Joël Bons: Nomaden (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Atlas Ensemble, Ed Spanjaard - Joël Bons: Nomaden (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Atlas Ensemble, Ed Spanjaard – Joël Bons: Nomaden (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:35 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS

Bons composed Nomaden for Queyras and the Atlas Ensemble – a group he himself founded in 2002, made up of 18 eminent musicians from China, Japan, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. From the Japanese shakuhachi and Chinese erhu to the Armenian duduk and the Persian setar, the scoring offers an untold number of combinations and an unheard spectrum of timbres. Nomaden was premièred by these performers in 2016, under the baton of Ed Spanjaard, and has been awarded the prestigious 2019 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.
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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov – Beethoven: Complete Works for Violoncello and Piano (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov - Beethoven: Complete Works for Violoncello and Piano (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov – Beethoven: Complete Works for Violoncello and Piano (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:18:41 minutes | 2,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

There are curiously few complete cycles of Beethoven’s five sonatas for cello and piano, given that the five, unlike the violin sonatas, were almost equally distributed among the composer’s early, middle, and late periods, and that each one was in its way a formally daring work. The last two sonatas in particular, with their mysteriously lyrical third relations and compact finales, fugal in the case of the Cello Sonata No. 5 in D major, Op. 102/2, might be regarded as having inaugurated Beethoven’s late period. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexander Melnikov (here playing a modern piano unlike on the trio recording the pair made with violinist Isabelle Faust) have an efficient, quick, tough style that beautifully fits these late sonatas. They do well in the two sonatas of Op. 5, not trying to impose an artificial shape on what must have been at the time shockingly long opening movements. The Cello Sonata No. 3 in A major, Op. 69, might want a bit more broad middle-period sweep and lyricism, but you get several bonuses here: a trio of variations for cello and piano from the years around 1800 that are almost never played, and uncannily direct sound from Harmonia Mundi, working in Berlin’s Teldex Studios. A worthy Beethoven cello set in every way.
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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud – Complices (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud - Complices (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud – Complices (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:39 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Friends and frequent recital partners Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexandre Tharaud are reunited here for an album conceived as a collection of short stories, presenting both celebrated and little-known masterpieces of the repertory. If the art of transcription is the hallmark of great performers, it must be said that our two partners are past masters at it! Throughout this lyrical yet virtuosic programme, music lovers will meet one surprise after another.
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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud – Brahms: Cello Sonatas & Hungarian Dances (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud - Brahms: Cello Sonatas & Hungarian Dances (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud – Brahms: Cello Sonatas & Hungarian Dances (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:28 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Warner Classics

Pianist Alexandre Tharaud and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras are long-established as a duo team, but this is the first time that Queyras has joined Tharaud for an Erato recording. They have chosen works that lie at the heart of the Romantic repertoire, all by Brahms: his two cello sonatas and the duo’s own transcriptions of six of the Hungarian Dances.
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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ensemble Resonanz, Riccardo Minasi – C.P.E. Bach: Cello Concertos (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ensemble Resonanz, Riccardo Minasi - C.P.E. Bach: Cello Concertos (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ensemble Resonanz, Riccardo Minasi – C.P.E. Bach: Cello Concertos (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 53:04 minutes | 548 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

After two albums which met with unanimous critical acclaim all over the world, the Resonanz Ensemble, based in Hamburg, is offering a recording dedicated to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: the Cello Concertos wq. 170 and Wq. 172, respectively from 1750 and 1753, and the Symphonie Wq. 173 of 1741. The listener will immediately note the radical difference in language between the two concertos, written after the death of Bach Senior, and the Symphony, written while he was still alive: the concertos keep their eyes firmly fixed on the nascent classical era, including the “Sturm und Drang” which still lay ahead (in this regard, the Concerto in A Minor which opens the album, full of force and melodic power, is an excellent example), whereas the Symphony takes the final throes of baroque as its point of departure. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and the Resonanz Ensemble offer a crystal-clear reading, conducted by their new musical director in residence, violinist Riccardo Minasi: and coolly resist the vogue – which can be quite intrusive, or even dictatorial or exclusive – for period instruments, which seems to hold that any music before Mozart (and even sometimes Mozart too) may not be played on modern instruments. Queyras, Resonanz and Minasi are all able to make use of stylistic elements gleaned from the fashion for baroque. This is a very fine album, superbly played, which really brings out all the originality of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud – Marin Marais: Folies d’Espagne, La Rêveuse & Other Works (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud - Marin Marais: Folies d'Espagne, La Rêveuse & Other Works (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz] Download

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexandre Tharaud – Marin Marais: Folies d’Espagne, La Rêveuse & Other Works (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:02:11 minutes | 2,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

A challenge! Twenty years after his harmonia mundi recordings reviving the tradition of performing the great French harpsichord composers (Rameau, Couperin) on the piano, Alexandre Tharaud now joins forces with his longstanding partner Jean-Guihen Queyras to explore the works of Marin Marais . . . on piano and cello! Drawing on their respective experiences in Baroque music, the two artists have taken up the challenge of presenting the essence of the master of the viola da gamba: timeless, even universal!
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Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov, Freiburger Barockorchester & Pablo Heras-Casado – Beethoven: Triple Concerto, Op. 56 & Trio, Op. 36 (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Alexander Melnikov, Freiburger Barockorchester & Pablo Heras-Casado – Beethoven: Triple Concerto, Op. 56 & Trio, Op. 36 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:18 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

After a successful trilogy devoted to the concertos and trios of Schumann, the team assembled alongside the Freiburger Barockorchester and Pablo Heras-Casado could not ignore one of Beethoven’s most unusual works: the Triple Concerto. They bring this score to life as only true chamber musicians can, revealing its subtlest colours and balances. The trio transcription of the Second Symphony, which was supervised by the composer himself, judiciously completes this exploration of lesser-known Beethoven, in which intimacy mingles with grandeur.

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Raphaël Imbert, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Pierre-François Blanchard, Sonny Troupé – Invisible Stream (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Raphaël Imbert, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Pierre-François Blanchard, Sonny Troupé – Invisible Stream (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:54 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

“Invisible Stream”: the “unseen currents” are those that connect people and musical works by transcending styles or customary aesthetic and cultural boundaries. A feast of poetic expression organized by four key representatives of both the classical and jazz music scenes of today, this recording initiates a dialogue – motivated by the purest spirit of improvisation – between the compositions of Raphaël Imbert and those of Schubert, Wagner, and Ornette Coleman.

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Jean-Guihen Queyras, Lee Santana, Michael Behringer – Vivaldi: Sonatas for Cello & Basso Continuo (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Jean-Guihen Queyras, Lee Santana, Michael Behringer – Vivaldi: Sonatas for Cello & Basso Continuo (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:11:09 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Antonio Vivaldi’s six sonatas for cello and continuo were written between 1720 and 1730 and published in Paris in 1740 by Leclerc and Boivin. Although a staple of the cello repertoire, these works are not often played in public recitals. When they were composed, the cello was just emerging as a solo instrument, and Vivaldi took full advantage of the instrument’s expressive capabilities. These performances feature soloist Jean-Guihen Queyras, accompanied by a continuo team of harpsichordist Michael Behringer, lutenist Lee Santana and cellist Christoph Dangel.

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