Hélène Sio J'veux Tout Savoir

Three leading soloists celebrate Nature in the Romantic era. Flautist Juliette Hurel and pianist Hélène Couvert, currently celebrating thirty years of musical partnership, are joined for this recording by cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand, who was voted ‘Instrumental Soloist of the Year’ at the French Music Awards 2022. They present a recital that enables us to meet the miller’s apprentice imagining his impending death surrounded by the flowers given him by his lost love (in transcriptions of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin ) and the water nymph Undine, who seeks to gain a human soul (in Reinecke’s Undine Sonata ).

Per Nørgård (b. 1932) is regarded by many as Denmark's greatest living composer, with some of his music being hard edged and difficult to approach. This music on this disc will not suit everyone, it is quite difficult to understand where the composer is going at times, and in the case of the "Plutonian Ode", which is for soprano and solo cello, I found little to like, perhaps it is because the first two sections are for recitation, but I found it just grates with me! This is not to say that there isn't anything to like here, on the contrary, the disc opens with his "Two Recitatives Op. 16" which sets texts by the Swedish poet, playwright and novelist, Pär Fabian Lagerkvist.

Three concertos, three orchestras, three soloists, one conductor–an interesting concept, and it works. These are very fine performances by any standard. The First Concerto at first seems not to have quite as much rhythmic heft as say, Kocsis or Ashkenazy, but a glance at the score reveals Pierre Boulez and Krystian Zimerman to be exceptionally attentive to Bartók’s dynamic markings. The first fortissimo arrives five bars after figure 11, exactly as written, but it would be a mistake to typify this reading in any way as soft-edged. Bartók himself, as a pianist, was noteworthy for stressing his music’s lyricism and folk-orientation. So does Zimerman, and the combination of this quality with Boulez’s typical clarity makes for an unusually probing reading.

The French pianist Hélène Grimaud is one of the most sought after contemporary pianists. Her great musical sensitivity and technical skills are indisputable, but she also has a radiant personality, with a stage appearance that captivates every audience. Now she has a long-standing contract with Deutsche Grammophon, while in the past she recorded for Erato. Her very first recordings were released by the Japanese audiophile label Denon, and according to many, these recordings are her very best. This set contains all the CDs (five in total) that she made for Denon between 1985 and 1992, with the great romantic repertoire in which she excels in clarity, sensitivity and structural build-up, and especially that very personal style that has become her unique trademark.