Béatrice Hardy Laudrin

Beatrice Rana combines Clara Wieck-Schumann and Robert Schumann's piano concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin In an interview with the New York Times, Rana, who called the piano concerto by Clara Wieck "a genius work in many ways," said: "I think that it's very, very underestimated - the intellectual value of this concerto in the history of music. It's fascinating to see that she conceived of this music free from any limitations; that as a teenager she composed an uninterrupted concerto with no breaks between the movements.

Throughout her career, most of Françoise Hardy's arrangements have tended toward the lush, though in a good way. La Question is lush too, but it's one of her most sparsely produced efforts, usually finding her voice accompanied by little more than an acoustic guitar, touches of bass, and very subtle orchestration.

Hardy Rittner seemed on top of his game both technically and interpretively in his first volume of Brahms' early piano works, but for some reason he seems less assured and less interpretively attuned to Brahms' music in this, his second volume. Performing the north German composer's C major and F minor sonatas, Rittner does not bring out of the piano the massive sonorities the music's out-sized chords require. This may be due in part to his choice of instrument. On the first volume, Rittner performed on a rich-toned 1851 Johann Baptist Streicher piano, but here he's playing an 1850 Bösendorfer lacking both depth and resonance.