His exceptional touch and sense of phrasing, his deep and personal understanding of the most varied repertoires, or even the legendary trio he formed together with Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals, made Alfred Cortot the greatest pianist of his time. Master of many disciples, notably the brilliant Dinu Lipatti, Samson François and Clara Haskil, Cortot also had a lasting influence on the Russian piano school through Samuil Feinberg and Heinrich Neuhaus, the latter himself being the revered teacher of Sviatoslav Richter.

All of the recordings in this set had undergone careful sound restoration in 2012, in order to respect as closely as possible the original sound. The remastering was carried out under the expert control of Mr. Guthrie Luke, a former disciple of Alfred Cortot who attended many recording sessions by Cortot. These recordings do not represent a "complete" edition: the many rolls engraved by the artist for Duo-Art, Aeolian and Pleyela labels have not been reproduced here, most of them doubling the 78-RPM repertoire. The first recordings are acoustic; and the ones with an electric microphone appeared as early as 1926.

Principal conductor Ivor Bolton will bid farewell to 'his' orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, in summer 2025 with a 'French' album. He will hand over the baton to his successor Markus Poschner for the new season. So as a farewell, here are symphonic and vocal works by Ernest Chausson. The Symphony in B flat major recorded here is characterised by it's lyrical melody and harmonic sophistication, which builds a bridge between romantic expressiveness and impressionistic sounds. In comparison, the vocal works also presented here, such as 'Viviane' or 'Helene', often have a more intimate, vocal quality that emphasises the human voice. These differences illustrate Chausson's versatility as a composer and his ability to combine fascinating instrumentation with profound emotions in both instrumental and vocal music.

Acclaimed concert violinist Rachel Barton Pine, sought-after pianist Orion Weiss, and the multiple Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet join forces for their new album French Impressions: Chamber Music by Chausson & Tailleferre, celebrating transformational works by French composers Ernest Chausson and Germaine Tailleferre, whose chamber music deserves greater attention on recordings. Chausson's Op. 21 sextet, titled Concert, known for it's unusual orchestration of solo violin, string quartet, and piano, takes advantage of the quasi-orchestral capabilities of a chamber ensemble. The only work on the album featuring Rachel Barton Pine, Pacifica Quartet, and Orion Weiss as a collective, Concert is regarded as one of the most important French chamber music works of the late-19th-century fin-de-siecle era. Germaine Tailleferre was a prolific composer and the only female member of the group of celebrated 20th-century French composers known as Les Six. Tailleferre was a piano prodigy who enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire at age 12, defying her father's objections. Her compositions span symphonic, chamber, and film music. A winner of numerous premiere prix, she studied with revered composers including Maurice Ravel, whose work significantly influenced her versatile style. Violinist Rachel Barton Pine showcases her "astonishing and joyful" (Washington Post) artistry, alongside the "powerful technique and exceptional insight" (Washington Post) of pianist Orion Weiss for Tailleferre's Violin Sonata No. 2, Pastorale, and Berceuse for Violin and Piano - works that often express a nostalgic longing for home and display dynamic and adventurous interplay between the violin and piano. The Pacifica Quartet, known for it's "remarkable expressive range and tonal beauty" (New York Times), is featured on Tailleferre's String Quartet, a piece acclaimed for it's playful themes, fluid accompanimental figuration, and bold harmonies.

Le temps des lilas is an ode to Romanticism, a love song and a nostalgic reflection on the bittersweet beauty of lost happiness. Dedicated to the music of Ernest Chausson, this album oscillates between passion and melancholy, wonder and nostalgia. The Concert Op. 21, a masterly work on the borderline between chamber music and orchestra, is carried by Pierre Fouchenneret's magnetic violin and David Violi's colorful piano. I Giardini also deliver a previously unpublished version of Poeme Op. 25, reworked for violin, piano and string quartet. The album closes with Pauline Buet's equally sensitive retelling of Chausson and Barbara's 'Temps des/du lilas', using cello in the former and singing voice in the latter. Barbara's song and Chausson's melody stand as a simple, timeless tribute to the magic of past moments and the fragility of human existence. Le temps des lilas is I Giardini's first full-length album for PENTATONE, following an already rich discography: Nuits (which has been awarded the prestigious Diapason d'Or), Bleu, Shaw and Faure, an EP released with PENTATONE in 2024.

NUITS D'ETE

Chausson: Symphony No. 20, Soir de fête & The Tempest

Poème

Chausson: Symphony in B-Flat Major / Viviane / Soir De Fete

Written between 1889 and 1891, the Concert is unique in the chamber music repertoire—scored for solo violin and piano with string quartet. Chausson entitled it Concert (French for concerto) rather than “Sextet,” but the work lies somewhere between a double concerto, in which the two solo instruments are pitted against an entire orchestra, and a sextet, in which all the instruments are more or less equal. Chausson dedicated the Concert to Eugène Ysaÿe, who played the solo violin part at the premiere in Brussels on March 4, 1892. The Crickboom Quartet played the remaining string parts, and Auguste Pierret, the pianist. The artists on this CD perform at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall (New York), Cadogan Hall (London), 92nd Street Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall (New York), National Gallery of Art (Washington DC), Bolívar Hall (London), Teatro Teresa Carreño (Caracas), Auditorio Blas Galindo (México, DF), Auditorio Manuel de Falla, (Granada), the Teatro Mayor (Bogotá), and for renowned organizations such as the BBC Proms Festival, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Chamber Music Society of Detroit.

This disc features four great Victorian works for Cello and Piano. This is literature that deserves to be a part of the standard repertoire.

POÊME DE L'AMOUR OP19+QUATUOR

Vocal Recital: Dawson, Lynne - Poulenc, F. / Hahn, R. / Chau

This new large-scale setting of the Magnificat has been written as a companion piece to J.S. Bach’s famous setting (BWV 243). Although making use of a more contemporary musical language, it uses similar instrumentation, follows the same framework of chorus and solo movements, and makes use of a number of features that are typical of Bach’s music.

In this recital, Véronique Gens and Hervé Niquet bring back to life a neglected aspect of France’s Romantic heritage: songs with orchestral accompaniment. Aside from a few pieces by Debussy and Duparc, and Berlioz’s famous Nuits d’été, orchestral mélodies form a virtually forgotten continent. In collaboration with the specialists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, Alpha now revisits these musical landscapes, taking us from Brittany (Hahn) to Persia, whose beauties Fauré and Saint-Saëns exalt in very different ways. Mélodies by Chausson, Gounod and Dubois and rarely heard instrumental pieces by Massenet, Fauré and Fernand de La Tombelle round out the journey with their musical reveries.

César Franck's only symphony came at a time when the French music world was seeking to rival the great Austro-German tradition. The 'darkness-to-light' narrative of the Symphony in D minor owes a debt to Beethoven and there is a unique power within its distinctive themes, innovative cyclic form, and general gravitas. Franck's student Ernest Chausson was no doubt inspired by his teachers thematic metamorphoses, but the anguished influence of the ever-present Wagner is also ever present.

The published score of Chausson's Symphony in B-flat includes many errors which conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud meticulously corrected after careful study of the composer's autograph manuscripts.

With their new CD "Hymne à l'amour"; the Duo Minerva once again shows how exciting and multifaceted classical music can sound. Their arrangements; woven with great artistry; their virtuosity and their exceptionally emotional style of music-making breathe fresh life into often-heard works. With a great deal of playfulness; the well-rehearsed duo moves between the most diverse genres and combines classical masterpieces with contemporary avant-garde; folk music and a pinch of the as yet unheard on the subject of love - entirely in Duo Minerva style.

The French violinist Hugues Borsarello draws this programme of miniatures from the repertory of his instrument and from the great operatic arias, transcribed for violin and orchestra: ‘My idea was to relate a French history of music over the course of three centuries, in the form of short pieces.’ Lully’s Marche pour la cérémonie des Turcs rubs shoulders with arias by Bizet, Saint-Saëns and Offenbach, Satie’s Gymnopédie no.3 and Gounod’s Ave Maria. All these universally known pieces ‘are perfectly suited to the soul of the violin’, says Borsarello, who is joined by prestigious guests: cellist Gautier Capuçon for Vieuxtemps’s Duo Brillant, guitarist Thomas Dutronc for Django Reinhardt’s celebrated Nuages, pianist Frank Braley.

And this programme doesn’t neglect the classics of the violin, including Ysaÿe’s magnificent Berceuse de l'enfant pauvre. Vieuxtemps’s famous set of variations on Yankee Doodle is here performed for the first time in its version with orchestra.

Marie-Laure Garnier, Célia Oneto Bensaid and the Hanson Quartet have imagined a program based on the theme of nostalgic love. Starting with Ernest Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer arranged for voice, string quartet and piano, they draw the thread of passion both joyful and melancholic in Gabriel Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson and Charlotte Sohy’s Les Chants nostalgiques, recorded for the first time in this formation. They give their name to this new b•records album placed under the sign of symbolism, grace and emotion.

Classical Music

CHAUSSON: Symphony in B-Flat Major / Poeme / Viviane

Impassioned and incisive performances of two of Chausson’s chamber masterworks.

Chausson did not commit himself to a musical career until he was twenty-six years old. The first fruits of that resolution were the fine songs of Op.2 and the Piano Trio Op.3. While the latter work possesses definite structural immaturities and is occasionally melodramatic, it also shows that the composer’s melodic gift and surpassing sense of thematic development were in evidence right from the beginning.

The introduction to Chausson’s Piano Trio is based on two themes that reappear throughout the work, generating other themes and insuring thematic unity. The stormy, almost morose, first movement proper demonstrates the composer’s already distinctive voice, especially in the development. The scherzo second movement has none of the drama of the first, being a rollicking and affectionate parody of the styles of some of the composer’s contemporaries. The massive slow movement starts out in a mood similar to that of the first, but becomes even more elegiac and wistful. The emotional level occasionally becomes strident, but the composer’s sincerity is unquestionable. The animé last movement starts off cheerfully, but themes from the first and third movements keep popping up, increasing the level of seriousness, and the movement ends quite austerely.

By 1889, almost a decade after the Piano Trio, Chausson had reached full artistic maturity. This is evident in the Concert, his best-known chamber work. The piece is not a concerto in the usual sense, but a sort of update of the concerto grosso, with the six instruments combining in different ways as well as playing all together. The first movement’s motto theme undergoes wonderful transformations in combination with a more lyrical second theme. The Sicilienne forms a gentle interlude between the weightier first and third movements, with the latter being something of a lament. The final movement continues the seriousness of its predecessor, but the overall feeling gr adually becomes one of tremendous vitality.

The Meadowmount Trio - their name derives from long-term residence at the music camp of that name - shows a of lot energy in their performance and Eric Larsen is especially to be commended for keeping things moving, although even he flags in the last movement. Larsen and the Meadowmount’s Stephen Shipps join the esteemed Wihan Quartet in the Concert and overall the six players form a cohesive unit, achieving quite a distinctive performance. Recording quality is fairly sumptuous by Naxos standards, although the violins are somewhat shrill. Altogether, a pair of moving and exciting performances.

-- William Kreindler, MusicWeb International

Gary Lemco writes: “My own beguilement with Szeryng came with his performance in 1987 Atlanta with Louis Lane, of the North American premiere of the 1927 Concerto by Reynaldo Hahn, the French master of the Belle Epoch. “Ah, yes”, asserts Szeryng, “Reynaldo Hahn, the most Parisian of all Parisians, even though he was born in Caracas of German parents. There is even a street in Caracas named for him. I remember meeting him; and even though he was trained as a pianist, he had a natural sense of the violin. Some favor his Violin Sonata. The Concerto is published, but for some reason nobody plays it. The first movement for me is the best and most compact and makes a natural display piece. The second movement is based on a song from Tunis — absolutely genuine— and the finale sings in a typical operetta style. It starts like an extension of the second movement and has tremendous wit and charm. And, to be sure, it is a challenge.”

REVIEW:

Szeryng was a class act. His tone pure yet full-bodied, his phrasing the product of a rounded and cultivated mind.

-- Gramophone (Reissue/Archive Issue of the Month, December 2021)

Ernest Chausson is a most unusual figure in French music, positioned at the crossroads where the romanticism of Berlioz and Franck meet the language of Wagner and the symbolism of the young Debussy. His Poème de l’amour et de la mer is a unique score for the period and certainly his greatest work; simultaneously a profane, naturistic cantata, a monologue, and a song cycle, it was composed between 1882 and 1892 to poetry by Maurice Bouchor, a longstanding friend of Chausson. Véronique Gens is recording this cycle for the first time, although she has already issued ‘Le temps des lilas’ with Susan Manoff at the piano for her album Néère, about which Ernst Van Bek wrote in Classiquenews: ‘Chausson’s “Le temps des lilas” mesmerises with the nuancing of its colors, the allusive precision of every sung word: this ecstatic, depressive prayer represents another peak of French post-Wagnerianism. The song uninterruptedly expresses the profound, accursed languor of overcharged spirits. The tact and sense of style that Gens displays, is proof of her remarkably acute understanding of the veiled references.’ Clément Taillia, in Forum Opera, spoke of ‘all the art of a song that desires to express itself…’ Véronique Gens’ talent is equally on display in this recording too, with the Orchestre National de Lille – an orchestra she already knows well – under Alexandre Bloch, its new chief conductor, whose appointment and first concerts and recordings have already caused a sensation. We can confidently predict that these two artists will be collaborating again in the near future… The Symphony in B flat major completes this programme: a summit of French symphonic writing, for some a milestone as important as the Symphony in D of Chausson’s teacher César Franck!

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REVIEWS:

A performance that ranks, unquestionably, among the finest to date. Superbly sung, and wonderfully well conducted and played by Alexandre Bloch and his Lille orchestra, this is an interpretation of great beauty and insight. Gens’s dark tone and her ability to fuse sound with sense allow her both to encompass the work’s rapturous lyricism and to map out the psychological subtlety of its depiction of the painful end of an affair.

– Gramophone

Lovers of French Romantic music will be in their element with this Chausson album. Eminent soprano Véronique Gens gives a quite stunning performance of the beautiful Poème de l’amour et de la mer and Alexandre Bloch and his players are in impressive form with the Symphonie.

– MusicWeb International

Brazilian composer Alberto Nepomuceno (1864-1920) is considered to be the founder of Brazilian art song. He deeply absorbed the influence of the German Lied and French Mélodie, combined them with some characteristic rhythms and melodic elements from his native country, and during his lifetime produced the most important body of Brazilian art songs, perhaps to this day. Featured on this album are nine of his non-Portuguese songs, five of which are world premiere recordings. Also included are songs by his European contemporaries Ernest Chausson, Edvard Grieg, and Richard Strauss.