Homicides Multiples Dans un Hôtel Miteux Des Bords de Loire

En revenant sur sa terre d'origine, dans l'Anjou, l'auteure évoque la mémoire de ses ancêtres des bords de Loire. Elle interroge ce qui subsiste, au XXIe siècle, des espoirs que les classes laborieuses fondaient dans le modèle républicain, dans le sillage de figures telles que Victor Hugo ou Louise Michel. …

Obsédé par l'idée d'aimer, Arthur fréquente dès l'adolescence une boîte de nuit nommée La plage, dans une petite ville des bords de Loire. Pendant vingt ans, il s'y rend de façon frénétique, s'y sentant curieusement proche des autres, alors qu'en dehors sa vie n'est que malaise et balbutiements. Entre amours fugaces et modèles masculins écrasants, il se cherche une place dans la foule. …

Between 1803 and 1968, the Grand Prix de Rome marked the zenith of composition studies at the Paris Conservatoire. In Maurice Ravel’s time the competition included an elimination round (a fugue and a choral piece) followed by a cantata in the form of an operatic scena. The entries were judged by a jury which generally favoured expertise and conformity more than originality and Ravel’s growing reputation as a member of the avant-garde was therefore hardly to his advantage, and may explain why he never won the coveted Premier Grand Prix, and the three-year stay at Rome’s Villa Medici that went with it.

The music of Michael Jarrell has been said to ‘examine states of dream and unreality, searching for a moment of truth’ – a truth which is often found in the lowest sonorities and slowest tempi, a place where time stands still. His works are often interrelated, not only by a certain sensitivity or a distinctive tone, but also by the recurrence of particular features that he reworks in different contexts.

From the moment Karen Gomyo first heard Astor Piazzolla on disc, at the age of fourteen, she was spellbound: ‘I had never heard such a combination of sensuality, fierceness, playfulness, sadness and nostalgia.’ As a violinist she found the role of the violin in Piazzolla’s music especially inspiring, and soon started playing it herself – first in various group combinations, and eventually together with Piazzolla’s longtime pianist Pablo Ziegler and his Tango Quartet. For the present disc she has chosen to record strings-only versions of three works originally for tango quintet (Seasons), guitar and flute (Histoire), and solo flute (Études).

With the present disc, Pascal Rophé and his Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire pay tribute to their great countryman, Claude Debussy – but not with the standard orchestral fare. Debussy Orchestrated paints a portrait of a light-hearted composer, seen through the eyes of two of his collaborators, Henri Büsser and André Caplet, who transferred the works recorded here from the keyboard to the orchestra. In Petite Suite, composed for piano four hands in 1899, Debussy makes allusions to Fêtes galantes by Paul Verlaine, the poet who so often inspired him.