Boulanger

The first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and one of the seminal films of the French New Wave, Breathless is story of the love between Michel Poiccard, a small-time hood wanted for killing a cop, and Patricia Franchini, an American who sells the International Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as Michel hides out from a dragnet. Breathless uses the famous techniques of the French New Wave: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition Godard uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate "mismatches" between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film's vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart's clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio.

"Beau Soir" - named after Debussy's evocation of evening - takes us from dusk to the moonlit night, from lullabies into sleep, from dreams to awakening and recollection. Popular classics such as Faure's Berceuse and Apr s un r ve and Debussy's Claire de lune are contrasted with three substantial works; sonatas by Debussy and Ravel, and Messiaen's Theme and Variations. The album also includes three new works by the widely admired contemporary Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon, whose violin concerto Janine Jansen premiered in Paris in 2008.

It is a meaningful sign of the times that Astor Piazzolla is arguably one of the most frequently performed composers on the contemporary musical stage, even though he probably never aimed at writing “classical” music. True, one of the fundamental encounters of his life was with composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger, who mentored many of the most important avant-garde musicians of the second half of the twentieth century. And, under her guidance, Piazzolla did attempt to express his personality through the language of Western contemporary music. The results, of course, were very good, since nobody could question Piazzolla’s talent. Yet, when Piazzolla performed one of the tangos he had already written to his professor, she exclaimed: “Astor, all your classical pieces are well written, but the true Piazzolla sound is here, never leave it behind!”. And if the language of Piazzolla’s music does not correspond to that of the coeval European avantgardes, neither does it conform to the standards of the Argentinian tango tradition. It is precisely for his utter originality that Astor Piazzolla rightfully claimed and obtained a place in the pantheon of twentieth-century classical music. But it is also this originality that may puzzle those attempting to classify him within one of the established musical categories.

On his second album for Sony Classical violinist Luka Faulisi presents a highly individual interpretation of Vivaldi's pioneering masterpiece, 'The Four Seasons'. The violinist's cinematic approach to 'The Four Seasons' involved encouraging members of the orchestra to engage with the composer's onomatopoeic animal and nature sounds and adding percussion not found in the original scores. Faulisi has also opted to splice Vivaldi's concertos with three complementary works inspired by the seasons: a traditional Catalan melody made famous by Pablo Casals, 'El cant dels ocells'; the haunting 'Nocturne' by Lili Boulanger; and an excerpt from Tchaikovsky's 'The Seasons', 'October - Autumn Song', a piece of understated romanticism inspired by Tolstoy.