Poulenc once declared that ‘the musical transposition of a poem must be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.’ By the age of four he was already able to recite Mallarme’s Apparition by heart, and while still very young he made his first efforts at setting verses to music. He loved listening to poets read their own work, and he was a voracious reader, who saw his purpose as a composer to embellish to enrich but never to obscure the words or their meaning. Poulenc loved singers and good singing as much as poetry. All these cycles were written with particular artists in mind; several of them for his life partner, the baritone Pierre Bernac, but he also worked very closely with Clare Croiza and Denise Duval, among others. Thus his vocal lines reflect their individual personalities while being couched in his own, very singable, jazz-inflected idiom. Valentina Coladonato has chosen a path less travelled through Poulenc’s song oeuvre, avoiding the Chansons villageoises and Air chantes. Yet in La Fraîcheur et le feu, setting Poulenc’s contemporary Paul Eluard, we find an intensity and urgency of expression to rival his masterpiece, the Dialogues of the Carmelites. Motifs from the opera recur in another Eluard cycle, Le travail du peintre, which addresses seven modern painters in turn from Picasso to Villon. A bittersweet air lingers over the Dernier poeme by Desnos, Aragon’s C and the monologue La dame de Monte Carlo; but his extrovert, amusing music-hall side comes to the fore in Les chemins de l’amour, based on Jean Anouilh’s Leocadia and dedicated to Yvonne Printemps, who was a singer of light music. Even within the same cycle there are contrasting moments that eloquently illustrate Poulenc’s own artistic credo: ‘My music is my portrait’. A specialist in early and new music, the soprano Valentina Coladonato has worked with conductors including Riccardo Muti and Claudio Abbado. She and Claudio Proietti have also recorded the Shakespeare Sonnets of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco for Brilliant Classics (BC95548).

Part of the great French musical tradition and a member of Les Six, Darius Milhaud was an important avant-garde figure in early 20th century Paris. The Oresteia of Aeschylus trilogy arose from his lifelong interest in Greek mythology and drama, inspired by the expressive, syncopated rhythms of Paul Claudel’s poetic texts. In addition to innovative rhythmic elements, the trilogy exhibits complex harmonic techniques, particularly polytonality, which Milhaud believed gave him more varied ways of expressing sweetness in addition to violence.

TAVENER Ex Maria virgine. Birthday Sleep. O Do Not Move. A Nativity. Marienhymne. O Thou Gentle Light. Angels • Timothy Brown, dir; Clare College Cambridge Ch • NAXOS 8.572168 (63:46 Text and Translation)


Two of the selections are first recordings: Ex Maria virgine , the major work at 38 minutes, and Marienhymne . The other works are not widely available, for Birthday Sleep was recorded by Stephen Layton (28:4), A Nativity by Matthew Greenall (not issued over here), and Angels by David Hill (23: 2). I cannot find the first recordings of the other two pieces.


Marienhymne is sung in German, while O Thou Gentle Light is sung in Greek (the ancient hymn Phos hiláron , which Dom Lucien David also set as a neo-Gregorian chant). The earliest work on the program, Angels , dates from 1985.


The major work is a setting of nine age-old texts in Latin or English separated by a refrain, “Ex Maria virgine,” the first movement being repeated at the end. One movement has a Greek refrain, the original of “hail, Mary,” but the first word is pronounced “kay-ray” rather than “ky-ruh.” The composer has a devoted following, so these accomplished performances will delight them.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber

Classical Music

The iciness and drama of his great film scores contrasts powerfully with the reserved and lyrical beauty of Bernard Herrmann’s chamber music. Souvenir de Voyage was his final concert work, each of the three movements having roots in a different work of art – A.E. Houseman’s On Wenlock Edge, Synge’s novel Riders to the Sea and the Venetian watercolours of J.M.W. Turner. This rhythmically sinuous clarinet quintet is both vivid and graceful. David Del Tredici’s Magyar Madness fuses ardency with playful wit, its long finale a vast and wild ‘Hungarian frenzy’.

REVIEW:

Written in 1967, Herrmann's Souvenirs de Voyage for clarinet quintet was his final concert composition, and it's a beauty. Clarinetist Michel Lethiec prefers tonal variety to uniformity, and he is not afraid to bring an occasional astringent edge to a curvaceous melody or extra heft to low sustained notes in support of string solos.

By way of stylistic contrast, David Del Tredici's brand of hyper-romanticism holds nothing back. Magyar Madness's first movement serves up heaps of counterpoint, accelerated repeat phrases, wild runs, and Richard Straussian harmonic tricks. Overall however, he deftly balances the work by providing enough moments of calm before each successive storm.

-- Gramophone

Cappella Nova, the esteemed Scottish vocal ensemble that specializes in early and contemporary choral repertoire shared a long working history with the contemporary sacred choral composer Sir John Tavener and have assembled nine premiere recordings along with re-recordings of Tavener compositions in this luminous and moving tribute to the legacy of Sir John.

Sergei Prokofiev, the great 20th century composer of such works as Peter and the Wolf, the ballet music Romeo and Juliet and music for the Sergei Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevski was also a great pianist: five of his orchestral concertos are dedicated to this instrument. These live performances from 2004 feature noted Franco-Lebanese pianist Abdel Rahman El Bacha (b. 1958). Mr. El Bacha’s first recording, dedicated to Prokofiev’s early work, won the Grand Prize of the Académie Charles Cros.

Classical Music

John Ireland was an exceptional composer for the piano, as was his contemporary York Bowen. He may not have been a "major" composer in a conventional sense, but his work deserves to be better known, especially outside of England. His Piano Concerto is a masterpiece. Sure, the influence of Prokofiev is obvious, but Ireland embraces it and makes it his own. Written in 1930, it offers a combination of romantic glamor, saucy wit, and lyrical expressiveness that's quite personal and memorable. John Lenehan plays it as well as anybody has to date, with a very winning combination of fluidity in passagework and an easy rhythmic precision in the finale that sounds just right.

Legend, a tone poem for piano and orchestra, lives up to its name. It's a brooding, dramatic work that, like so many short pieces for piano and orchestra, never will be heard in concert because of its brevity. Why doesn't some pianist put together a program of tone poems for piano and orchestra and turn them into a "mini" concerto? Anyway, what makes this program so attractive is the inclusion of the solo piano works. Lenehan already has produced several fine discs of Ireland's piano music, and there's no question that he understands the idiom. The pieces on offer here really show Ireland's range, from the passionate First Rhapsody to the poetic Sea Idyll and colorful Three Dances. Excellent sonics too.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Alain Vernhes, Martial Defontaine, Francois Le Roux, Serghei Khomov, Sandrine Piau, Anna Shafajinskaja, and Sir Willard White star in this de Nederlandse Opera production of the Prokofiev opera conducted by Stephane Deneve.

This album received the 2008 Grammy Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance."

Robert Craft leads a thrilling performance of Oedipus Rex--incisive, swift, and as mercilessly inevitable as fate itself. From the opening bars, where those spine-chilling runs in the trumpet penetrate the orchestral tutti like screams of horror, you can tell that Craft has every detail of this work (his second recording) well in hand, and so for that matter does the Philharmonia. Anyone who believes that Craft is a dull conductor should listen to this urgent account--from the great choruses (first announcing Jocasta's entrance, with particularly clear timpani and piano ostinatos, and later her death), to the Verdian energy he brings to the Oedipus/Jocasta duet in Act 2. It would have been even better if Craft had followed Stravinsky's lead in his own early-1960s recording: repeat the "Gloria" chorus with the opening Act 2 narration in the middle. It's not a major point, and strictly speaking it's not what's in the score; but it's such marvelous music, and hearing it twice simply doubles the pleasure.


As for the singers, they do well--for the most part. After some initial unsteadiness Martyn Hill settles down to close Act 1 most affectingly, and his singing in Act 2 is very good. Jennifer Lane's Jocasta sounds younger than, say, Jessye Norman's, and her lighter touch gets around the notes better than many a bigger, heavier voice. As Creon, David Wilson-Johnson offers disappointingly approximate pitch in his big Act 1 aria, but he does much better in the slower-moving proclamations of the Messenger. The smaller roles come off without any problems, and the Simon Joly Male Chorus sings more confidently than it did in Craft's Symphony of Psalms. Speaker Edward Fox sounds like a bored Oxford don, but at least he admirably refrains from the annoying histrionics that some bring to the part (particularly in its French-language version). And Craft naturally makes sure that as Stravinsky wanted, Fox pronounces the protagonist's name "Eedipus" as opposed to the chorus' "Oydipus".


Craft's Les Noces--he would with good reason prefer the Russian title "Svadebka"--is simply spectacular. Not only does it feature both superb playing by the four pianos and percussion and marvelous singing by soprano Alison Wells and Martyn Hill, but it's clear that Craft has invested a great deal of care and attention in getting clear articulation of the Russian text. This is critical because, as Craft explains in his notes, the music flows naturally from the speech-rhythms of the words. So many performances of this marvelous piece sound like garbled chanting in an unrecognizable tongue. Craft ensures that for once we really hear the Russian, and just as significantly he balances his forces perfectly so that singers and instrumentalists play off each other with an astonishing degree of rhythmic tension. The resulting explosion of color and energy (you can hear this at any point, but the transition from the third to the fourth scene offers an excellent example) has few if any equals in other performances--including Craft's earlier one on Music Masters. Ideally clear and focused sound completes this very desirable package, given new life thanks to Naxos (these performances previously appeared, differently coupled, on Koch). [2/5/2005]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Recognised as rising stars of their generation, pianist Ashley Wass and the Tippett Quartet join forces to present two contrasting yet equally engaging British piano quintets. Conceived on a grand, expansive scale and influenced by Celtic music, with all manner of harmonic and instrumental colours exploited to super effect, Arnold Bax’s Quintet is arguably a precursor of his later symphonies. Frank Bridge’s early work (1904–5, revised 1912) combines his admiration for the music of Fauré with the highly integrated ‘fantasy’ techniques he honed when composing music for the famous Cobbett Prize.

This special ‘241’ set celebrates ten years of Gianandrea Noseda’s Musica Italiana series. Recording with both the BBC Philharmonic and the Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino, Noseda has shown a remarkable commitment to championing long-forgotten scores by well-known Italian composers as well as the finest works by altogether neglected ones. Both discs feature excerpts of more substantial orchestral and operatic works by several Italian late-Romantics and early-mid-20th c. modernists.

Classical Music

From mysterious moonlit night to joyous sunlit day, this recording runs the gamut of Alfredo Casella’s huge stylistic range. Notte di maggio (‘A Night in May’), composed in the wake of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, is Casella at his most radical, while the delightful ‘Divertimento’ Scarlattiana finds him at his most relaxed, spicing up themes from Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas—in the manner of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. Between them comes Casella’s Cello Concerto, its style influenced by the ‘baroque magnificence of Rome’, with a finale the composer called ‘the flight of the improved bumblebee’.

Classical Music

Prokofiev, S.: Eugene Onegin

Naxos’s program of Scandinavian violin concertos represents both night and day in the works of former violinists and composers Jean Sibelius and Christian Sinding. Sibelius’s rhapsodic concerto bears the impress of the young man who improvised on the violin in the craggy fastnesses of his native country; Sinding’s (the first, from 1898, of three) pays tribute to the late Romantic virtuoso tradition, with the soloist’s opening gesture curiously suggestive of a finale theme from Bruch’s First Concerto. If Sibelius’s dimly lit Serenade and Sinding’s expansively cinematic Romance (there’s a touch of the cinematic in the concerto as well, although both works antedated the era) don’t suggest night and day, they make almost as strong a contrast. Henning Kraggerud plays with great virtuosity in Sibelius’s violinistic magnum opus, and the recorded sound, though balanced, captures even the snap of his bow in the inky vortex of the first movement’s swirling passagework. His tone on the 1744 Ole Bull Guarneri del Gesù, lent to him for this recording, sounds as runically eldritch as Sibelius’s music itself. Kraggerud makes the most of this sinuousness, playing the second movement’s sinking double stops moodily rather than ecstatically. He affects the same mysterioso in the recitative-like sections of Sibelius’s Serenade. Sinding’s concerto, on the other hand, turns out, as its opening foreshadows, to be an extroverted romp (although the slow movement provides its share of somber, resonant musing); and as the music’s tension relaxes, so does the edge on Kraggerud’s virtuosity (he seems more at home in the danse macabre than in the tantoli). But he’s ardently songful in Sinding’s Romance from 1910, of which this recording’s proclaimed by its label to be the first. Bjarte Engeset and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra provide a sonorous and allusive (and appropriately abrupt, where necessary) backdrop to Kraggerud’s dark divagations in Sibelius’s works and a lush romantic one for his more extroverted gambols in Sinding’s.

Kraggerud faces Olympian competition in Sibelius’s concerto, but his dark-hued yet brilliant reading compares favorably on its own terms with Heifetz’s cold light or Vengerov’s highly personalized meanderings. He has Sinding’s works pretty much to himself. The release can therefore be recommended all round: a strongly competitive, eerie Sibelius concerto, a Serenade that, while it may not match Mutter’s languid yearning (Deutsche Grammophon 447-895-2), provides the requisite subdued colors in its less histrionic way, and two unfamiliar works by Sinding.

Robert Maxham, FANFARE

Classical Music

Ondine's successful Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) recordings with the NDR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Christoph Eschenbach continue with another release featuring two major symphonic works by the composer: Symphonie ‘Mathis der Maler' and Symphonie in E-flat.

The orchestra's and Christoph Eschenbach's previous Hindemith release together with Midori won a Grammy Award in 2014.

The ‘Mathis der Maler' Symphony is based on an opera that treats the life of the Renaissance painter Mathias Grünewald. Hindemith started to work on the symphony already prior to the completion of the opera. The symphony was premiered with great success by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler on 12 March 1934. This performance was the last premiere of an orchestral work by Hindemith in Germany before the National Socialist regime issued a general performance prohibition applying to his works in 1936.

Hindemith wrote his Symphonie in E-flat during his exile in the United States in 1940. The Symphony is absolute music in the tradition of the four-movement symphony of Beethoven and the romantic period.

REVIEW:

Eschenbach’s trademark fondness for textural warmth and clarity is much to the fore in Mathis, where strings and woodwind are admirably numinous, the complex counterpoint in both the ‘Engelkonzert’ and the ‘Temptation’ beautifully detailed. The central ‘Grablegung’ is slow, rich-sounding and very introverted. The state-of-the-art recording, pristine and wide-ranging but with no sense of dynamic exaggeration, helps him at the big climaxes, which are imposing, at times even monumental, and there’s a beguiling elegance to the instrumental solos that thread their way through the textures. Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic on DG have more dramatic bite but this is superbly done nevertheless.

Eschenbach’s approach to the underrated Symphony in E flat, meanwhile, is epic, thoughtful and at times startlingly measured. He is wonderfully attuned to the complex trajectory of a work that looks back from a newly acquired place of safety on an old world irrevocably damaged. The opening Sehr lebhaft has terrific élan, the scherzo a supple, gracious wit. The orchestral clarity is again breathtaking. But placed beside the almost reckless energy of Bernstein (Sony—nla) or Hindemith himself (DG), you notice a grander manner and slower speeds. Eschenbach’s longbreathed way with the crucial Sehr langsam steers it closer to ritual mourning than private grief, though his treatment of the work’s closing pages, in which sadness briefly threatens to intrude upon gathering joy, is moving in the extreme.

-- Gramophone

All of Steuart Bedford's Britten recordings are excellent, and this one is no exception. The most important item here is the suite from Gloriana, a beautiful and moving piece that for some reason has never quite caught on. Bedford captures the bravura and pageantry of the opening and Courtly Dances, as well as that bitter edge that so surprised the opera's first audience. There are more exciting performances of the Four Sea Interludes available (including the composer's own), though Bedford's are never less than very good--but the Sinfonia da Requiem is terrific, aided by some virtuoso playing in the second movement by the LSO brass section and by a rich recording that gives those pounding timpani and bass drum strokes in the opening movement great power. Originally recorded for Collins Classics, at Naxos prices this is a bargain of the first magnitude. [6/14/2005] --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Represented by the Ludwig van Beethoven Association, the Ksiazek Piano Duo is one of the most interesting piano duos in the world; the ensemble is made up of two outstanding Polish pianists, Agnieszka Zahaczewska-Ksiazek and Krzysztof Ksiazek. Since 2012, which marks the beginning of their cooperation, the multi-award-winning duo has given a number of concerts in Switzerland, France, Thailand, Great Britain and South Africa, winning recognition of the audience and critical acclaim. The present album contains works for two pianos by Anton Arenski and Sergei Rachmaninoff, which play an important role in the compositional legacy of both artists. In both cases, the formation of two pianos is an individually-approached creation, although in the case of Rachmaninoff it manifests itself to an exceptional extent; the said creations feature a piano technique using a wide range of possibilities and advantages of the instrument, a technique that both composers perfectly understand.

For his latest solo album in a growing catalog of increasingly critically praised recordings for Signum Classics, Alessio Bax returns with a program of rich and evocative works for piano by Modest Mussorgsky and Alexander Scriabin. The Italian-born, NYC-based pianist Alessio Bax creates “a ravishing listening experience” with his lyrical playing, insightful interpretations, and dazzling facility. “His playing quivers with an almost hypnotic intensity,” says Gramophone magazine, leading to what Dallas Morning News calls “an out-of-body experience.” “…a pianist of refreshing depth.” (International Piano) Alessio Bax plays Beethoven, released in 2014, was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice: “'Even when compared to legendary performances of this sonata (Kempff, Richter, Gilels, Brendel, etc), this performance stands its ground in music to test the technique and intellect of even the greatest pianists.”

The award-winning French pianist Pascal Rogé presents a program of music by Gershwin and Ravel in a recording with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Bertrand de Billy. Rogé’s affinity for the French style and empathy with jazz make him particularly suited to this repertoire. His recordings of French piano music have received Gramophone, Grand Prix du Disque and Edison awards. In addition to the classical-romantic repertoire of the Viennese and German schools, 20th-century French music is also one of his specialties. “An intelligent, richly enjoyable performance of the ravel Concerto.” (BBC Music Magazine) “Roge’s playing of Ravel’s Left-Hand concerto is masterly. He has complete technical regard for the work; more importantly, he appreciates the range of the music, its darkness, menace, anger, other-worldly escape, introspection and defiance.” (International Piano Magazine)

REVIEW:

The team of Pascal Rogé and Bertrand de Billy, with some outstanding playing from the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, bring much to this music. The pianist makes easy work of Ravel’s tremendously difficult writing and clarifies a number of problematic textures in the Gershwin.

-- Fanfare

Performed by the trio for whom it was written, Paul Schoenfield's new composition "Last Silence" picks up where "Cafe Music" left off. A show stopping tour de force of excitement and emotion. Schoenfield's "Four Souvenirs" is finally released here by violinist Lev Polyakin and pianist Frances Renzi, who commissioned the work. Beautiful trios by Rota and Cui round out the album. Paul Schoenfeld‘s music is widely performed and continues to draw an ever-expanding group of fans. According to Juilliard’s Joel Sachs, “he is among those all-too-rare composers whose work combines exuberance and seriousness, familiarity and originality, lightness and depth. His work is inspired by the whole range of musical experience, popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, and the ‘normal’ historical traditions of cultivated music making, often treated with sly twists. Above all, he has achieved the rare fusion of an extremely complex and rigorous compositional mind with an instinct for accessibility and a reveling in sound that sometimes borders on the manic.”

Inspired by the American poet Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the symphonic poem "The Bells" was written in 1913. In four parts, it describes the different features of bell ringing: children’s sleigh bells in the first section, the wedding bells of a young couple in the second, alarm bells for a misfortune in the third and mourning bells in the fourth one. In his work, Rachmaninov uses the text version by Konstantin Balmont (1867–1943), who freely rewrote the text by Edgar Allan Poe. Rachmaninov adeptly avoided onomatopoetically emulating the sounds of bells with carillons and similar percussion instruments. Between counterpoint and Russian church hymn: Escape from the world and faith in a moving cantata Taneyev had learnt his technique of composition from Bach’s and Handel’s polyphony and pursued the idea of combining counterpoint and Russian folk music. The cantata Ioann Damaskin (“Johannes Damascenus”), created 1883–84, refers to a longer poem by Aleksej K. Tolstoj (1817–1875). It deals with the flight of the world from John of Damascus (around 650– before 754) from the worldly crowds to the spiritual retreat. However, from this very long poem Taneyev selected merely 16 lines as the source for a church cantata without reference to the biographical background. It is purely about man’s path through life in darkness and fear and redemption at The Last Judgement. The counterpoint of the work, learnt from Baroque music, takes a special position in Russian late Romanticism.

This program of French music is built on the cornerstone of Debussy’s most famous work, Clair de Lune. Philipp Jonas (Violin) and Maximilian Schairer (Piano) have performed as a duo since 2016. They continue to excite their audiences with their “natural and joyous repeat performances, played with a superior artistic level and exceptionally colorful tonal range”. Their repertoire features notable pieces ranging from classical to contemporary compositions. These include Sonatas by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Dvořák, Grieg, Debussy, Ravel, Sibelius, and Strawinsky. The duo receives musical inspiration from their mentors Julia Fischer, Silke Avenhaus, Michael Hauber and Florian Wiek. Philipp and Maximilan first performed in a selection of chamber music concerts and also at various festivals in Germany and Italy. Notable examples include performances at the AMMERSEErenade Classic Music Festival, at the Happy Classic Hours as master students of Julia Fischer, at ZUKUNFTSKLANG in Stuttgart, with the Roma Tre Orchestra, and at the Montecastelli Chamber Festival.Following their European success the duo received a cultural stipend for a concert tour through Indonesia in 2019. Their concerts were celebrated enthusiastically by the audience and critics: “Two young musicians with exceptional achievements and a first grade musical reputation” wrote the Indonesian Press.

Frank Peter Zimmermann, one of today’s most highly regarded violinists, takes our breath away with this recording together with the Bamberger Symphoniker and their chief conductor Jakub Hruša – one of the leading Martinu conductors of today. They start off by exploring the lyrical side of Bohuslav Martinu, offered in the Second Violin Concerto (1943), to dive into the neo-classical idiom championed by Stravinsky that informs the composer’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin closes the album. Composed in 1944, only a year before Bartók’s death, it is a deeply personal statement which fuses the overall layout of Bach’s solo violin sonatas with Hungarian folk tradition with results that are as fascinating to the listener as they are challenging to the performer.

 

REVIEW:

 

Hrůša is as fine a Martinů interpreter as anyone on the podium currently. What impresses most here, however, is the clarity and naturalness of Zimmermann’s performances, remarkable in combining an intimate knowledge of the music (the result of long study) with a freshness of approach. This is, for me, the top recommendation for these two works and, frankly, is how Martinů should always be played.

 

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, January 2021)

Sophie Dervaux’s debut album on Berlin Classics is very much in the French tradition. Together with her French colleague, pianist Sélim Mazari, the bassoonist presents works on this concept album Impressions that are by composers of various eras, including Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Fauré and Koechlin. The bassoon – unusually – takes the stage as a soloist and so fulfils the purpose that the Vienna Phil bassoonist had in mind: to present the unique singing sound of the instrument and enrich the world of the bassoon in the process. “A lot of people think of the bassoon as an amusing instrument. But it can be more than just the jolly clown. I wanted to show that it can sound wonderful and sing wonderfully too.” There is no doubt that Dervaux has proved her point on Impressions. Her repertoire brings together familiar and seldom heard pieces, and at times ushers its audience into a dream world. Among those pieces are Debussy’s Clair de Lune and Beau Soir, illustrating the tonal compass of the bassoon. Sophie Dervaux also presents the Sonata for bassoon and piano in G major, op. 168, written by Camille Saint-Saëns, in his old age. Great phrases and lines flow from Dervaux’s instrument in Fauré’s Après un rêve, and a piece she arranged herself, Pièce en forme d’habanera by Ravel, brings out the almost human voice of the instrument. These Impressionists are joined by theorist and composer Charles Koechlin with his Sonata, op.71. Going a step further, Reynaldo Hahn’s A Cloris and Roger Boutry’s Interferénces bridge the gap between old and new and introduce jazz influences. With her new album Impressions, Sophie Dervaux aims to show her audience what is special about the bassoon: its sound, and its virtuosity too.