The first chamber music album 'Ravel & Chausson' by Claire Huangci as part of the Trio Machiavelli has been released today. The combination of Maurice Ravel's Piano Trio and Ernest Chausson's Piano Quartet marks an encounter between two works of opposite character.
"Whole Heart" is the debut album from cellist Claire Bryant featuring seven bold works for solo cello and string duo written by a luminary slate of diverse living composers: Caroline Shaw, Jessie Montgomery, Andrea Casarrubios, Adam Schoenberg, Jessica Meyer, Reena Esmail, and Tanner Porter. These works reflect love and the human experience. Whole Heart is a reminder of the collective challenges we face and the resilience and strength that live inside each of us.
Other than the piano, there were few instruments on which Chopin focused his attention, which makes this album featuring cellist Anne Gastinel something of a rarity - all the more so in the hands of this iconic French cellist and her partner Claire Désert, veterans of countless concerts and recordings over several decades. Their united voice - as always, remote from the chorus of the mundane and the media-fixated - is a subtle, inspired cantilena.