Gustav Moreau

The young French cellist Edgar Moreau, an established Erato artist, is joined by his siblings – the violinists Raphaëlle and David and the pianist Jérémie – for Dvořák’s five Bagatelles op 47 and Korngold’s Suite op 23. As David points out, works for the combination of two violins, cello and piano are unusual: “These are wonderful pieces that are rarely played, so this is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on them.” When it comes to playing as a family, Edgar feels that “There’s something that works almost instinctively,” while Raphaëlle explains that “We don’t need to look at each other, and we breathe together in a certain way. There’s something very strong about it.” Completing the programme are transcriptions of much-loved operatic arias from Dvořák’s Rusalka and Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, performed by Edgar and Jérémie.

This program offers three lively, colorful, and captivating orchestral works by two United States composers, born almost a century apart. These pieces exhibit the fruitful exchange and flow of musical material between North and South America that has long played a role in popular music, apparent not only in commercial song and dance music using Latin American melodies and rhythms but also in early jazz and blues where tango rhythms are so often heard, as in W. C. Handy's St. Louis Blues. And both Gottschalk in the 1850s, close to the beginning of a creative American musical tradition, and Gould in the 1950s, when such a tradition had flowered considerably, show a combination of seriousness of approach with a popular touch.

Raphaëlle Moreau and Célia Oneto Bensaid take a tour of Europe through four female composers who were celebrated during their lifetime but have since fallen into guilty oblivion. Four different languages, three sonatas at the turn of the 1920s, two miniatures from the immediate post-war period: a rich sound photograph that finally gives voice to the genius of four singular destinies, the Frenchwoman Marguerite Canal, the Croatian Dora Pejačević, the Dutchwoman Henriëtte Bosmans and the Polish Grażyna Bacewicz.

Edgar Moreau salutes his family heritage and highlights landmarks in his artistic development with Transmission – music by Bloch, Korngold, Bruch and Ravel, recorded with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Michael Sanderling. Moreau’s mother is of Polish-Jewish extraction and all five works on the album have a connection with Jewish culture. The largest work on the programme is Bloch’s Schelomo, which Moreau describes as “a majestic meeting of concerto and symphony, rich and colourful in its orchestration and full of contrasts”.

Edgar Moreau performs two cello concertos which bravely and wittily challenge convention. Offenbach’s ambitious Grand Concerto in G major culminates in military fireworks, while Friedrich Gulda’s Concerto for Cello, Wind Orchestra and Band – written 130 years later – is a dazzling stylistic kaleidoscope. Moreau is joined by conductor Raphaël Merlin and the dynamic orchestral collective Les Forces Majeures.

2021 marks 100 years since the death of Camille Saint-Saëns, one of the acknowledged masters of French music. Pianist Bertrand Chamayou, violinist Renaud Capuçon and cellist Edgar Moreau salute him with this album of three of his finest chamber works: the Violin Sonata No 1, Cello Sonata No 1 and Piano Trio No 2. “These are splendid works,” says Bertrand Chamayou, “but only relatively rarely performed and recorded. This is essential French Romantic chamber music and French performers of our generation have a duty to share it with audiences.”

Pour rendre hommage à la grande actrice dont le nom est indissociable de la Chanson, ce coffret réunit pour la 1ère fois les 29 chansons que Serge Rezvani alias Bassiak a écrites pour Jeanne Moreau dans la foulée du Tourbillon de la vie. Jacques Canetti les a enregistrées en 1963, puis en 1966, avec comme orchestrateurs deux grands noms du jazz : Ward Swingle et Elek Bacsik.