Nuances

Track Listings

1. Terre Nouvelle

2. Marie-Micheline

3. Mutation

4. Lumière

5. Diapason

6. Choral

7. Illumination

8. Le Chant des Énergies

9. Vision

10. Vie

11. Naître

12. Les Saisons

13. Nuances

Editorial Reviews
About the Artist
Alain Lemay is a classically trained pianist and self-taught composer who has been composing since the age of 14. After 11 years of piano study at Vincent d'Indy College, in Montreal, Quebec; he later went on to get a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of Montreal. Alain currently teaches music at École secondaire Le Carrefour (high school) in Varennes, Quebec; he involves his students in such projects as school bands and the annual production of their own CD for fund-raising purposes. Alain is constantly pursuing his interest in the effects of music on health and well-being, occasionally giving seminars on the subject.

Product Description
The Quantic New Age music series has been designed and produced specifically for relaxation, meditation and self-healing sessions. Through meditation and communion with their spirits, Micheline Allaire and Alain Lemay have created ideal, therapeutic new age sounds for relieving stress, opening the chakras, discovering creativity and spirituality, as well as for grounding. Micheline and Alain present a unique collection of new age music which allows listeners to journey to the true centers of their beings in a calm and serene environment.

Nuances,Alain Lemay

Nuances

Tracks:

Lent
Assez Large
Extremement Rapide
Lent
Modere, Presque Vif
Tres Librement, avec De Brusques Oppositions De Mouvement Et De Nuances
Parethese. Nettement Au - Dessous De Lent - Attacca
Glose. Lent - Attacca
Commentaire. Nettement Moins Lent - Attacca
Texte. Presque Lent
Melange Points Et Blocs. Modere/Vif
Points 3. Suspendu
Blocs II. Lent
Points 2. Suspendu
Blocs I. Vif
Points 1. Suspendu

Amazon.com

Boulez the composer isn't for everyone, his music's appeal often confined to avant-garde enthusiasts and to those nostalgic for the days when serialism was the dominant style. But many of his works are accessible to the open-minded willing to meet him on his own ground, which is to say that melody, tonal allure and easily understandable structure are not part of a musical vocabulary that seeks to create new forms while detonating old ones. The first two piano sonatas were written when Boulez was a musical revolutionary in his early twenties; yet the results are polished and stimulating. Jumppanen, a young Finn handpicked by Boulez to record this disc, is completely idiomatic, with the technique to do justice to these works. Pollini may reign unchallenged in the Sonata No. 2 and Idel Biret's fine recording of all three works on Naxos is budget priced, tempting novices to give them a hearing. But having all three sonatas easily available in such fine performances makes this disc a must for Boulez's admirers. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

Not Boulez at his recent greatest, but technically inventive and a bold step in his musical evolution.......2006-08-03

Pierre Boulez's three piano sonatas are early works indeed. The first two were written in his early 20s, while the third came not long after. Here the young Finnish pianist Paavali Jumppanen gives a reading which, if not outright called definitive by the composer, still seems to carry his approval.

Even for those familiar with much serial music, even if you've heard everything else Boulez composed, the piano sonatas can be difficult listening. In fact, in the beginning one might think it merely a series of bleeps and bloops without order. Gaining insight into these takes time, and in the beginning one should focus on the simple succession of individual gestures even if the musical development on a large scale can't be perceived. Over time, however, the sonatas unlock their secrets, and one begins to notice motifs and clever form.

The first two sonatas are not Boulez's first pieces--they were preceded by the recently rehabilitated "Notations" for piano (1945)--but they are Boulez's first individual achievement. In the "Piano Sonata No. 1" (1946) the sonorities of Webern (especially the "Symphonie" op. 21), coexist with an interest in dynamic and attack which is pure Boulez. The first movement is developed out of merely four opening gestures: a rising minor sixth, an appoggiatura, an isolated note, and a brusqe arpeggio. The second movement opens with cells all over the keyboard, and the dashing between octaves hints at Boulez's later solo piano work "Incises".

For much of his career has sought to take serialism beyond mere miniatures, like Webern, to grand designs. The four-movement "Piano Sonata No. 2" (1948) is, at nearly a half an hour long, an important venture in this direction. Popular opinions about Boulez as entirely detached from tradition will be amazed at the work's clear debt to Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" and "Waldstein" sonatas, and it even uses a B-A-C-H motif throughout. Its first movement is marked "extremement vif"--right off we find a violence and virtuosity never before heard in Boulez--and it posseses the elegant dramatic arc of classical sonata form, exposition--development--recapitulation. The second, slow movement is lyrical and melodic, while the brief (three-minute) third minute combines variation and scherzo form. The fourth movement, however, is extremely rich, made up of an introduction, a fugue, a rondo, and a coda. A twelve-tone fugue makes for exciting listening.

The "Piano Sonata No. 3" (1955-57) was written during Boulez's interest in quasi-aleatoric writing where the performer was free to decide the order of the piece's sections. Inspired by Mallarme and the possibility of a book in perpetual expansion, this quality can be found also in Boulez's "Eclat" and "Pli selon pli", though Boulez ultimately fixed the ordering of the latter. This sonata has remained uncompleted for almost fifty years, and of the five "formants" (not "movements", since they don't move forward) which are to make up the piece, only the second and third have been published. The Third Sonata is by far the most abstract of the three, and understanding its structure involves close listening, ideally with score at hand. While based on an interesting concept, it offers fewer possibilities for mere entertainment than the first two.

I'm loathe to criticize Jumppanen's performance, since Boulez sure thinks highly of it. So far I've only heard the recordings with Jumppanen and Idil Biret (on Naxos), and while the lighter touch of Biret is good listening, she flubs a few parts of the second that Jumppanen handles flawlessly. Jumppanen's use of pedal is much heavier, but it seems in keeping with the score. This recording has fine liner notes by Paul Griffiths, but for best understanding the sonatas I'd recommend getting a copy of Dominique Jameux's PIERRE BOULEZ (English translation Harvard University Press, 1991 ISBN 0-674-66740-9).

For me, Boulez really hit his stride after "Eclat", when he produced a number of works full of brilliant colour and elegant construction such as "Sur Incises", "...explosante-fixe..." and "Repons". I'd recommend those first to anyone curious about Boulez's music. Still, the piano sonatas are an interesting step in Boulez's musical development, as well as some of the most rigorous and adventurous serial writing of the generation after the Second Viennese School.

Great Third,and First; less so Second.......2005-03-13

The 'Second Sonata' of Boulez seems to get everyone confused,or stymied,afraid of its "abyss" it was his most violent gratuitous and brutal work, most exposed to the extremities of its own timbre. Pollini plays it like an automaton coldly,like he's a "phanthom" playing and not there, only Yvonne Loriod comprehends the times,the gestures of this piece if you contemplate it as a document certainly the Occupation of Paris in WW2 had some effect/affect on the young Pierre,riding the Metro with Messiaen and that culture was undergoing some form of demise or the transgressive.
His icons were of course those in literature;Rene Char and Mallarme who he really did not know well enough in the mid Forties to utilize in a work's concept, but certainly the theatre of cruelty of Artaud and much later the chiseled word games(plays) of Beckett. Loriod brings this incredible sense of endlessness to the timbre,abandoned to the narrative and deeply resonant, ringing continuously seemingly,and the premise of the work is "transgression" of the intervallic materials. The concept of the Sonata was chosen only to disintegrate its architecture; Jumppanen doesn't get this fully he was very timid,tenuous, and he seldom "took off"where tones became "noises" exceedingly polite at times; you never sense the timbral extremities of the work, that "other" realm that Boulez was interested in and continued to be with subsequent works. The first movement rhythmic cells,D-A-D#-G#,C# F-G should be charged with high combustible energy where the phrases foment and accrete toward greater crashes,"bottlenecks" of violence. The work should be thought through in this way, for then the relative calms within the four movements as the second movement is should not be too too calm and restained needlessly.The "surreal-like" second movement should be suggestive, not simply sustained intervals without direction. I felt this a bit. There is no momentum at all then so the work simply dissipates into an anti-aesthetic of nothingness.
These timid sensibilities gently skills however work quite well in the "First Sonata", Jumppanen goes for the discreetly beautiful,the sustained the tinckle of the opening,F#-D,F-Eb-E these threadbare exposed materials are gently compelling, then the more noise like arpeggiations are really interruptions of this beauty.Aimard you may find somewhere in between where he never sacrifices the overall brutal premise of the work's aesthetic. But then we get to Jumppanen and the 'Third Sonata', the mobile indeterminisms at work, work quite well. This now is a real piece of modernity,with a high conceptual premise, with exposed lines that can only depend upon themselves not an on=going intervallic narrative,or accreting contrasting movements, as we found in the other two Sonatas. Here each anti-movement (not movements for nothing really moves anywheres) but gestures, points, moments depend upon themselves, and in the 'Formant 3' the alternating contrasts of 'Points' to 'Blocs' is indeed engaging. You fall in with the 'Blocs' movements the more brutal suspended gestures,greater richness of piano timbre,with harmonics to "trail" the gesture into the next to the more threadbare private single tones in the 'Points'.There are also a wider pallette of timbre in the 'Third Sonata' here with a differing array of attacks to the piano keys, the use of all three pedals and harmonics, where you silently depressed tones then striking others to produce an eeery resonance, that really is barely auduble on this recoding and in a concert hall perhaps not at all.Jumppanen is wonderful here in the Third with a detached demeanor simply allowing the piece to fall off, and he seems much more willing to engage now the more brutal moments.

Average customer rating:

Listen to one of the masters!
Effortless mastery
Claude Delangle Rocks

A La Francaise
Claude Delangle & Odile
Manufacturer: Bis
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
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ASIN: B00006B1RX
Release Date: 2002-07-16

Tracks:

I. Tres Modere, Expressif
II. Andante
III. Fileuse
IV. Nocturne Et Final
I. Plumpudding. Allegro Moderato
II. Puits D'Amour. Lent Sans Exces
III. Negre En Chemise. Andante Non Troppo Lento
IV. Linzer Tart. Allegro Non Troppo (Mouvement De Habanera)
V. Grenadine. Allegro (Mouvement De Habanera)
VI. Rahat Loukhoum. Tres Tranquillement
I. Lamento. Adagio Espressivo
II. Rondo. Vif
I. Farandoulo Di Chatouno (Farandole Des Jeunes Filles)
II. Cansoun Per Ma Mio (Chanson Pour Ma Mie)
III. La Boumiano (La Bohemienne)
IV. Dis Alyscamps L'Amo Souspire (Des Alyscamps L'Ame Soupire)
V. Lou Cabridan (Le Cabridan)
I. Pour Les Traits Rapides
II. Pour Les Sons Lies Et Le Charme De La Sonorite
III. Pour Les Arpeges
VIII. Pour Les Notes En Staccato, Et Le Melange De Lagato Et Staccato
IX. Pour La Longeur De La Respiration Et L'Egalite Du Son
X. Pour La Qualite Du Son Dans Un Style Soutenu Et Pour Les Nuances
XIII. Pour La Legerete Du Son
Prelude
Cadence
Final

Customer Reviews:

Listen to one of the masters!.......2007-03-07

Delangle is one of the few players alive today that can be truy considered a true virtuoso and a master on the saxophone. Take a listen to what is technically possible on the saxophone. As mentioned before, Delangle is executing some of the hardest phrases to play technically on the saxophone and making it sound almost too easy. Another interesting note is, unless I'm mistaken, Delangle used a saxophone that is the vintage of when Adolphe Sax played to try and re-create what the saxophone would have sounded like in Sax's time. Amazing technical execution. Buy this CD, you will not be disapointed. An excellent CD just to have in your collection for a piece of history. Highly recommened!

Effortless mastery.......2004-02-16

I agree mostly with "saxgod"'s review, in that it is fortunate for us as listeners to hear one of the few masters of the saxophone play works from the standard repertoire of the instrument. His interpretations of these pieces are of the technically cleanest and the artistically most Apollonian variety. The ensemble work is impeccable and shows that of which an initially excellent duo is capable after many many years of partnership.

Although the Delangles present some of the best recordings of the commonly played Maurice and Desenclos, the real gems of this CD are the rarely recorded/performed works by Decruck, Sancan, and Koechlin. The Decruck is both richly beautiful and well-crafted, and must be counted among the best sonatas for saxophone (if it is not "the" best). It is written in a neo-impressionist style which may be reminiscent of what Ravel or Poulenc would have written for saxophone if those two had been alive or convinced early on to add to the then-sparse repertoire.

The Rondo movement of the Sancan is immaculately performed, as well as each contrasting Koechlin etude. The single aspect of Delangle's saxophone playing that sets him apart from most others is the ease at which his gestures occur. On this CD, he plays some of the most difficult technical passages in the saxophone literature, and makes it seem as if the listener can pick up the saxophone and be able to execute the hardest measures on the first attempt.

Highly recommended CD to listeners of every variety. An essential listening item for saxophonists of any idiom.

OANegrin

Claude Delangle Rocks.......2003-01-16

This album is worth the 15 bucks just for the 5th movement of Tableaux de Provence. Claude Delangle's technique, phrasing and interpretational skills are still unmatched by any classical sax player. On one cd we are given the finest recording available of two major works for the saxophone, the aforementioned Tableaux de Provence, and Desenclos' Prelude Cadence et Finale. You shouldn't need to read this review to know that you should buy this cd, if it's from Delangle you know it will be awesome. It's nice to hear him playing something other than just contemporary saxophone as he is a master of all music.

Average customer rating:

Finally! A Native Christmas CD with Spirit!

Peace on Earth
John Two Hawks
Manufacturer: Circle Studios
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | New Age | Styles | Music
ASIN: B0001Z94V0
Release Date: 2003-11-01

Tracks:

Drummer Boy
O' Little Town of Bethlehem
Snowfall
What Child is This
Carol of the Birds
Morning Star
Silent Night
Pachelbel's Canon
Yahweh
I Wonder as I Wander
O' Holy Night

Album Description

One-of-a-kind, timeless, spiritual Christmas music with an Indigenous heart! John Two-Hawks does it again! His enchanting cedar flute and stirring vocal renditions are tastefully accented with guitars, keyboards, nature sounds, and even some Indian drums. Yet these old holiday favorites still retain the warm, familiar melodies that have made them classics for all these years! A 'must-have' Christmas CD!

Customer Reviews:

Finally! A Native Christmas CD with Spirit!.......2005-05-03

For anyone who has tired of used up, overdone, boring remakes of Christmas music, I would like to, with joy and celebration, recommend the 'Peace on Earth' CD by renowned Native American musician John Two-Hawks! This CD will blow you away. It is that good. This is, hands down, the best Christmas music CD I have ever heard. Yes that's right, I did not say "the best Native American Christmas CD", I said "the best Christmas CD", and I meant it. I love this CD so much I am listening to it even as I write this, in May! If you are considering buying this, I say you will be very pleased if you do. This is music you and your family will listen to and love for a very long time.

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Nuances: Edwina Sings at Christmas

Manufacturer: Edwina Humphrey Flynn
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAFIL4
Release Date: 1997-01-01

James Reams and the Barnstormers: Troubled Times

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Additional information about this CD (includes DVD)

James Reams and the Barnstormers: Troubled Times

Manufacturer: Mountain Redbird Music
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Country | Styles | Music

General | Bluegrass | Country | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAJPZE
Release Date: 2005-03-01

Customer Reviews:

Additional information about this CD (includes DVD).......2006-06-27

I can't "review" of this project because I am involved in its creation, but I'd like to offer a clarification: This is not just an "audio CD" as indicated here on Amazon.com. There are, in fact, two disks in the package -- a CD with 14 songs PLUS a DVD with two films -- one is an 80-minute documentary about James Reams & The Barnstormers (including lots of concert footage) and the other is a 20-minute preview of a documentary James Reams and Dave Fasano are working on called "Pioneers of Bluegrass Music" in which they interview some of the first-generation of bluegrass musicians, including Jimmy Martin, J.D. Crow, Curly Seckler and many more. The full-length "Pioneers" documentary is still being filmed and will be released in 2007 or 2008.

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Koechlin: Oeuvres a Cappella

Manufacturer: Skarbo
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000007NMG
Release Date: 1998-05-26

Average customer rating:

Nuances

Manufacturer: Cynthia Christy
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Jazz | Styles | Music

Smooth Jazz | Jazz | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAFCZG
Release Date: 2002-09-17

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Nuances: New Music for Flute and Guitar
Vereno , Mcguire , Feldman , Liebermann , and Riessbec
Manufacturer: Nca
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

Classical | Imports | Stores | Music
ASIN: B00004S86W
Release Date: 2006-05-08

Average customer rating:

Glorious Sexual Cool
Janelle
Manufacturer: Exploited Music
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music

General | Rock | Styles | Music

Psychedelic Rock | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music

General | Alternative Rock | Indie Music | Stores | Music

Rock | Alternative Rock | Indie Music | Stores | Music
ASIN: B0009KX2G0
Release Date: 2005-05-04

Tracks:

The Call
One in a Million
Butterfly Sunbeam
Situations
Cloud 7
Heavy is the Head
The 16th Floor
Moonage Daydream
Renaissance
Delicate
Moon
Change
As Tears Go By

Product Description

Glorious vocals. Sexual impulses. Cool inspiration...is the newest release from singer/songwriter, Janelle. Glorious Sexual Cool is a wild musical tapestry of psychedelic nuances. Janelle invites you through a world of rock, blues, country, soul, world any given moment and when you least expect it. A musically poetic celebration and expression of hope, elevation, rebellion, uncertainty, fury, and love - all tightly woven with a voice of passion.

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Prisms
Alexander Nikolayevich Skryabin , Leo Tolstoi , Gustav Mahler , Hugh Downs , Michel Block , and John Bell Young
Manufacturer: Americus Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Etudes | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music