OK (object Lessons)

Well, I've been well and truly Claire Martinned - and it's a good thing to be, I can tell you. With these four from the ‘nineties, which I hadn't heard before, plus the five that I already had, I thought I might have the Linn CM output so far. But I discover that there are a couple more I have to catch up with. With Claire having been showing British female jazz singers how to do it during two decades now, the nineties were her ‘early years', and this package, ranging from her Waiting Game debut (1992), through Devil May Care (1993), Old Boyfriends (1994), to Make This City Ours (1997), provides some intriguing insights.

Cesar Franck's passionate and sunny Violin Sonata has long been regarded as one of the greatest in the repertoire, and is the work of a composer at the height of his powers. Richard Strauss's Violin Sonata, composed a year after Franck's in 1887, is the work of a young composer on the cusp of discovering his mature voice; lyrical and sumptuous, it has all the hallmarks of his later style. Performed here by distinguished violinist and conductor Augustin Dumay and French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie, this recording marks the duo's recording debut. In addition to the sonatas, this album includes two Franck rarities - Melancolie and the Prelude, Fugue and Variation Op.18 for organ, heard here in an arrangement by Dumay and Lortie. The recording concludes with the wonderful Heifetz arrangement of Strauss's song Auf stillem Waldespfad.