Pascal Gallet

Between 1975 and 1983, Jordi Savall recorded five albums including the most beautiful pieces from each of the five ‘Books of Pieces for the Viol’ composed by Marin Marais between 1686 and 1725. A silence of nearly 250 years came to an end. A repertoire - and even better, an instrument - returned from oblivion.

Henri Dutilleux's "Ainsi la nuit" (1976) is a modern classic, and it's easy to see why. This is a work that parodoxically combines impressionist lushness and total transparency, surface attractiveness and deep mystery. Ravel meets Bartok? The work is in seven movements, which each have their own particular concern, though there are "parenthetical" moments that interlink the entire piece. "Nocturne 1" is a mysterious static soundscape periodically fractured by outbursts………

Christopher Culver @ amazon.com

The award-winning French pianist Pascal Rogé presents a programme of music by Gershwin and Ravel in a recording with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Bertrand de Billy. Rogés affinity for the French style and empathy with jazz make him particularly suited to this repertoire. His recordings of French piano music have received Gramophone, Grand Prix du Disque and Edison awards. In addition to the classical-romantic repertoire of the Viennese and German schools, 20th-century French music is also one of his specialities.

As with many episodes in Franz Schubert’s life, uncertainty surrounds the origins of his two trios for piano, violin and cello. We know that they were played to a Viennese audience, one on 26 December 1827 and the other on 26 March 1828, but not in which order. Although it is more likely that the Trio no. 1 in B flat major op. 99 was performed before the Trio no. 2 in E flat major op. 100, musicologists remain divided on the subject. Documentary sources provide a certain amount of information about the Trio op. 100: the manuscript tells us it was composed in November 1827, while Schubert’s correspondence shows a composer desperate to have his work published, even to the extent of removing a number of development sections and a repeat from the final movement because some publishers found the work too long. The manuscript of the first trio has been lost. By comparing indirect evidence, however, including the different types of manuscript paper Schubert used, we may conjecture that the Trio op. 99 was also composed in the autumn of 1827.