Alfred Cortot

Éric Heidsieck, gave his first recital at the age of 9 in Reims and his first concert with orchestra a year later. In 1954, he finished the class of Marcel Ciampi in the first place; then took his first lessons with Alfred Cortot at l'Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris. Parallel to that, he attended the courses of Wilhelm Kempff on L.v. Beethoven in Positano.

Takahiro Yoshikawa was born in Nishinomiya, Japan. Sinse his childhood he showed a strong artistic sensibility, that he followed, earning in the end a degree in Piano at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and a doctorate in Music Research under the guidance of Terugi Karashima.

Pierre Monteux born into a Jewish family from the Comtat Venaissin, Pierre Monteux studied the violin from the age of six.

Halina Czerny-Stefańska (31 December 1922 – 1 July 2001) was a Polish pianist.

For elodie Vignon, the decision to record Debussy's complete piano works in chronological order was born of what the Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune was in Debussy's day: a revelation! For her, playing this music is like entering a cocoon that belongs to you alone. This first volume (generous with 2CDs) of the three that will make up the complete works, naturally begins with Debussy's early works, pieces directly inspired by poems by Mallarme and Verlaine and which embrace the mysterious dimension of the sensory imagination. In the years that followed, he increasingly freed music from the polarisation exerted by the tonal note, keeping the sound space open and ultimately initiating spectral music. Debussy liked to draw inspiration from memories when composing, in order to maintain a distance between his own emotions and those he wished to arouse in the listener. Alfred Cortot spoke of evoking sensations rather than feelings, thus rejecting the late-Romantic aesthetic of emotional identification between composer and listener: an obligation that seemed too constraining to Debussy to be able to give rise to an open dialogue with the listeners of his work. Giving the impression of being invented as it is played, Debussy's music invites us to dream, to better understand the complexity of the world.

Georges (originally György) Cziffra (November 5, 1921–January 17, 1994) was a Hungarian virtuoso pianist. A son of Hungarian Romas (his father, György Cziffra Sr., was a cimbalom player and played in cabaret halls and restaurants in Paris in the 1910s), born in Budapest, Cziffra became noted at the age of five, improvising on popular tunes in bars and circuses. His teachers at the Franz Liszt Academy included Ernő Dohnányi.

Audrey Abela is a truly exceptional pianist who specialises in the repertoire of her native France. 'En Suite' is Audrey Abela's beautifully poised, nuanced tribute to the French suite, from its origins in the Baroque masterpieces of Couperin and Rameau, to the sensitive 20th-century tributes of Debussy and Ravel.

This album brings together three works for cello and piano. The first of them, Gabriel Faure's Cello Sonata No. 1, is a cornerstone of the repertoire for this medium. It was composed in 1917 and premiered by cellist Gerard Hekking and pianist Alfred Cortot.