Raoul Stéphane Pugno was born in Montrouge (nowadays a Parisian suburb) in 1852 by a French mother and an Italian father, a piano seller in...

Raoul Stéphane Pugno was born in Montrouge (nowadays a Parisian suburb) in 1852 by a French mother and an Italian father, a piano seller in the Parisian Quartier Latin. As a child, he attended the Paris Conservatory, revealing himself a very brilliant piano and composition student, but too young, he paid his democratic engagement in favour of the Commune with a twenty year exile from the official Parisian musical life: to earn his living he served as a church organist, composer of salon piano pieces and opérettes. Finally, in 1893, aged 41, he debuted in Grieg’s Piano Concerto substituting Louis Diémer, and shortly he toured Europe and the Usa as an ambassador of the piano French music in the world.At the piano, Pugno was a refined performer of the romantic repertoire. As a man, he was a generous person, loving poetry, art objects, fond of women and good food. His music is a vivid testimony of his romantic sensitivity, a faithful portrait of his epoch. For the first time, this cd presents two Pugno’s albums of melodies for voice and piano, Choches du souvenir (1908) and Amours brèves (1899), based on the poems of the Belgian symbolist poet, Maurice Vaucaire. Les Heures claires (1910, poems by Emile Verhaeren) marks the collaboration with 23 year old Nadia Boulanger, Pugno’s collaborator and lover. They were together in Moscow, when he died in 1914.