Hugues KL

The French violinist Hugues Borsarello draws this programme of miniatures from the repertory of his instrument and from the great operatic arias, transcribed for violin and orchestra: 'My idea was to relate a French history of music over the course of three centuries, in the form of short pieces.' Lully's Marche pour la ceremonie des Turcs rubs shoulders with arias by Bizet, Saint-Saens and Offenbach, Satie's Gymnopedie no.3 and Gounod's Ave Maria.

The French violinist Hugues Borsarello draws this programme of miniatures from the repertory of his instrument and from the great operatic arias, transcribed for violin and orchestra: 'My idea was to relate a French history of music over the course of three centuries, in the form of short pieces.' Lully's Marche pour la ceremonie des Turcs rubs shoulders with arias by Bizet, Saint-Saens and Offenbach, Satie's Gymnopedie no.3 and Gounod's Ave Maria. All these universally known pieces 'are perfectly suited to the soul of the violin', says Borsarello, who is joined by prestigious guests: cellist Gautier Capucon for Vieuxtemps's Duo Brillant, guitarist Thomas Dutronc for Django Reinhardt's celebrated Nuages, pianist Frank Braley. And this programme doesn't neglect the classics of the violin, including Ysaye's magnificent Berceuse de l'enfant pauvre. Vieuxtemps's famous set of variations on Yankee Doodle is here performed for the first time in its version with orchestra.

Among the most interesting personalities needing to be rediscovered in the musical world of late-nineteenth￾century Italy, a very distinctive one is undoubtedly the Piedmontese composer Pietro Eugenio Luigi Hugues (Casale Monferrato, 27 October 1836 – 5 March 1913). The available information about Hugues is no longer as scanty as it used to be. Thanks to the data obtained by archive researches, Hugues has been revealed as an unexpected figure: he was not only a renowned flutist, organist and composer, but also an important geographer, a university professor, and one of the main supporters of the study of geography in Italian schools.