Laurent Delteil

Two musicians frequently recognized for their passion for hard-edged modern and contemporary music take on the music of modern pioneer Maurice Ravel. The Ravel piano concertos come off as brilliant and sparkling in the hands of Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Pierre Boulez, along with the Cleveland Orchestra. Boulez and the orchestra make Ravel's orchestral writing sparkle in the Concerto for Left Hand, and in the Concerto in G they highlight not only the sassy jazz references, but also the references to Stravinsky, and do it without drawing attention away from the rest of the music.

Spinnin’ is my fifth album as a leader, the first within the jazz piano trio idiom. For this recording, I called a drummer with whom I played quite a bit during my past years in NY – currently with tenor Joe Lovano – the young Otis Brown III, and the bass player everybody digs (Dianne Reeves, Joshua Redman, Charles Lloyd…), Reuben Rogers. ~ Laurent Coq.

Willi Apel, one of the great twentieth-century experts on harpsichord music, declared: ‘With d’Anglebert, French keyboard music reaches its highest point of Baroque magnificence and fulness. His skill in continuing a melody, contrapuntally interweaving voices, concatenating harmonies by way of suspensions, and always using meaningful figures as ornaments brings to a final culmination and maturity what his teacher, Chambonnières, began . . .’

Devienne was a professor of flute at the Conservatory of Music of Paris and bassoonist in the orchestra of the grand opera theatre of Paris in 1796. In these pieces Devienne demonstrates his mastery of gallant conversation with an admirably light touch. In these works it is the bassoon and the violin that shape the musical events. Laurent Lefèvre won the Premier Grand Prix at the Concours International d'Exécution musicale of Geneva. He is the first bassoon soloist in the orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris. He has made solo appearances in many orchestras and festivals in Germany, Swizterland, Argentina and Belgium.

This is the real raw thing, a live recording of a hot performance–pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard tackling a rangy and demanding program without benefit of retakes or sonic airbrushing. Not only do we feel the excitement of the occasion, but we also reap the benefits of intelligent playing and first-class engineering. Aimard plays with a fierce, thoughtful lyricism and punchy fluidity, and if at times he’s a little clipped, it’s to greater rather than lesser effect–it becomes something of a trademark. The concert opens with the Alban Berg`s sonata, difficult and thick stuff, but in Aimard’s capable hands every note is audible; the chilling ending is made even more so through his careful workings.

“Confidences” marks the return to recording, after a long gap, of one of the most respected pianists in France for his artistic vision, the courage of his—sometimes polemical—positions and the fertility of his musical conceptions: Laurent Coq. For his third opus in the demanding format of the piano-double bass-drums trio, rich in his collaborations with leading musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, from Miguel Zenon to Walter Smith III, from Sophie Alour to Julien Lourau, the pianist presents a series of eight compositions which are all moments of musical truth.

Despite the vast quantity of his compositions and the popularity he enjoyed during his lifetime, none of the 19 violin concertos of Rodolphe Kreutzer are heard with any great frequency on the modern concert stage. In fact, Kreutzer's name is largely forgotten save for his pedagogical writings and etudes. The liner notes of the CPO album put forth the notion Kreutzer's concertos have not fared as well as those of Brahms, Beethoven, and the like because Kreutzer was not primarily a symphonic composer. Upon hearing the three concertos recorded here (15, 18, and 19), listeners may find some truth to this theory. Compared to the fiery virtuosity and engaging melodies of the solo part, the orchestral tuttis are rather banal.