A 2023 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Chamber Performance!

Hailed by the magazine BBC Music for its ‘generous and warm-hearted, utterly beguiling playing’, the Neave Trio has emerged as one of the finest young ensembles of its generation. It has been praised by WQXR Radio in New York City for its ‘bright and radiant music making’, described by The Strad as having ‘elegant phrasing and deft control of textures’, and praised by The New York Times for its ‘excellent performances’. Here, the trio presents a program of music connected by the theme of Remembrance.

Rachmaninoff’s early first piano trio was inspired by Tchaikovsky’s trio in A minor, and shows illuminating glimpses of the mature composer to come. The elegiac mood of Rachmaninoff’s work is matched by that of Brahms’s first trio – again an early composition – which was inspired by the composer’s (unrequited) feelings for Clara Schumann.

Ravel’s only piano trio was composed in 1914, as France was being drawn into the horrors of the first world war. Ravel draws extensively on the rhythms and forms of his native Basque musical traditions, while the title of the second movement, ‘Pantoum’, refers to a form of traditional Malaysian poetry which typically deals with two separate themes in alternation, a feature to which Ravel responds with a series of contrasting themes and textures.

French pianist Vincent Larderet inaugurates a definitive, four-volume series of the composer’s complete works for solo piano, signifying Vincent’s fulfilment of a decades-long devotion his compatriot. This first-ever Urtext compilation of Ravel’s complete works for solo piano is a landmark collection that embraces numerous world-premiere renditions. Many works, whilst familiar, are prepared and recorded from personal scores that were annotated by pianist and pedagogue Vlado Perlemuter during his private study and close collaboration with the composer between 1927 and 1929. These scores reveal invaluable insights to interpretation of such aspects as tempi, pedalling, phrasing and tonal colours. Through his tutelage under Perlemuter’s student Carlos Cebro, Vincent Larderet is a direct inheritor of Ravel’s ethos and interpretive style.

Volume 1 of Vincent’s Ravel survey includes original solo piano versions of the popular Valses nobles et sentimentales and Pavane pour une infante de´funte, alongside the five-movement suite Miroirs and Sonatine.

The string quartets of Debussy and Ravel, composed within a decade of each other, make a natural pairing. The Arod Quartet, celebrating it's 10th anniversary in 2023, sets these two belle époque masterpieces in a present-day context with a third work: Al Asr, by the young French composer Benjamin Attahir. The scope of this Erato release is further expanded with a DVD documentary about the Arod Quartet, entitled Ménage à quatre and directed by Bruno Monsaingeon. His first experience of the Arod Quartet was a revelation: "Had I ever heard such sheer strength of attack, such dramatic power, such a variety of sonic colour or dramatic range - all combined with such prodigious delicacy of phrasing?" It was in 2017 that the Arod Quartet gave the premiere of Benjamin Attahir's Al Asr, a substantial work which takes poetic inspiration from the Muslim afternoon prayer and the intense heat of the moment midway between noon and sunset. "Al Asr is dedicated to my wonderful friends in the Quatuor Arod," says Attahir. "They have brought it to life in a way I would never have dared to dream."

This was something I'd had in mind for a long time..." says pianist Alexandre Tharaud, "to put together an album for the sheer pleasure of it, in collaboration with dear friends and paying tribute to the wonders of the piano duet repertoire." The aptly named 4 Hands offers 18 tracks, each just a few minutes in length, each featuring Tharaud sharing a piano keyboard with a different partner. The repertoire ranges wide - from Bach to Glass by way of such composers as Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Fauré, Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, and Piazzolla. 15 of Tharaud's fellow performers are celebrated pianists - among them the late Nicholas Angelich, Mariam Batsashvili, Bertrand Chamayou, David Fray, Víkingur Ólafsson, and Beatrice Rana. The other three, all stars in their musical fields, are shown in a new, pianistic light: cellist Gautier Capuçon, countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and singer-songwriter Juliette. "The piano duet is one of life's miracles," continues Tharaud. "First and foremost, it is the most intimate way of playing chamber music... It was a joy to record this album... If hearing these pieces prompts people to buy some sheet music and enjoy playing duets together - just as we did in the recording studio - then I will have achieved my aim.

Lars Vogt (1970-2022) early recordings collected here provide a document of an artist who always remained authentic, both to himself and to music. Lars Vogt never sought absolute truth, but truthfulness instead meant all the more to him. The man and the artist were always very close, never currying favour and never detached from the world. He was, instead, open and natural. "It's incredibly gratifying when you notice that you can perhaps light a little spark, a little flame for music in people, and when music helps you to find the path to your own soul."

A veritable musical metaphor for the suicide of Europe that was the Great War, both apotheosis and apocalypse. We also hear evocations of Schubert, Liszt, Mahler and Kreisler, all imbued with a kind of nostalgia that belongs only to this mythical city. - Aurélien Pontier

Dedicated to the last years of Imperial Vienna, which gave rise to an artistic effervescence unique in European history. The program opens with a piano transcription of Strauss's Die Fledermaus and ends with Ravel's La Valse.