Guillaume II

After Lucifer (2014) and Pour sortir au jour (2016), the French composer Guillaume Connesson returns to Deutsche Grammophon with "Lost Horizon", a new double-album directed by Stéphane Denève at the head of the Brussels Philharmonic. Already awarded the Victoire de la Musique Classique in the Composer category in 2015, Guillaume Connesson received last February his second award as Composer of the Year 2019 for "Les Horizons perdus", Concerto for Violin created in September 2018 that we find within this double album. These two CDs show two facets of the composer's art and offer two trips. One outside, with the fantastic and festive "Cities of Lovecraft" and the saxophone Concerto A Kind of Trane performed by Timothy McAllister

It was a great idea to unite in one CD two composers who symbolized the first generation of Germanic romanticism: Schubert and Mendelssohn, associated with Richard Strauss who was to incarnate with Mahler the last jolts of post-romanticism. Schubert composed his sonata for arpeggione and piano in A minor, D.821-1824, for an instrument whose very brief existence was the arpeggione. It begins with an Allegro moderato, developed in a passionate tone, but devoid of any feverishness or anxiety, elements that frequently appear in many works by Schubert contemporaries of this Sonata.

After a critically acclaimed first album, the Ouranos Ensemble returns to the recording studio with pianist Guillaume Vincent. This mischievous album brings together masterpieces by Strauss, Poulenc and Françaix, and reveals the virtuosity of wind instruments through a thousand musical antics. A seductive program, carried with mastery by one of the most distinguished ensembles of recent years!