Les Larmes de Jacqueline

For her debut album on the yellow label Camille has chosen music full of youthful invention – uplifting and positive. She brings her own sensitive interpretation to the French Romantic works for cello and orchestra by Saint-Saëns and Offenbach, including the former’s First Cello Concerto, a masterpiece of its genre, and a delightful excerpt from the latter’s Harmonies des bois “Les Larmes de Jacqueline”. The album was recorded with the Orchestre National de Lille and Alexandre Bloch, and also includes guest appearances by tenor Rolando Villazón and violinist Nemanja Radulović.

The music of Jacques Offenbach defines the intoxicating, hedonistic spirit of Paris in the mid-19th century. Above all, there is the galop infernal from Orphée aux enfers, often known simply as ‘the can-can’. That Offenbach also had a gift for lyricism is clear from his haunting, lilting Barcarolle, a highlight of his opera Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Both pieces feature in this irresistible collection of operetta, opera and orchestral music. Alongside many treasures from the Warner Classics catalogue, it contains the first-time release of Musette for cello and orchestra in performance by Edgar Moreau with Les Forces Majeures and Raphaël Merlin.

Only few cellists are as inspiring as Raphaela Gromes: her cello playing is virtuosic and vibrant, full of passion and technically brilliant, versatile and charming at the same time. She fascinates her audience as soloist as well as duo-partner or member of a wind-quartet, her performance being fantastically challenging and extraordinarily light-footed.

The French Album is the debut album of a young and exciting cellist Harriet Krijgh. Harriet is a member of the Live Music Now Foundation which was established by Yehudi Menuhin. On this recording she performs a selection of works by Fauré Debussy, Franck and Offenbach, accompanied by Kamilla Isanbaeva on piano.