Pascal Gallet

This recording brings together four of Chausson's chamber works from different periods of his short life. His youthful Piano Trio and the Andante and Allegro date from April 1881; the Pièce for cello and piano—one of his last compositions—from 1897.

The vibraphonist and composer, Pascal Schumacher has made a name for himself in a variety of collaborative endeavours. From quartets to symphonic orchestras, jazz tunes to classical chamber music, he has built a unique relationship with his instrument and has been relentless in assuring his position as a versatile and adventurous musician. Now he launches his first solo album, SOL via Neue Meister label. SOL captures Pascal’s newfound passion for solitude in all its magnetism. Yet, it remains true to a relationship’s main characteristic; intimacy. First imagine empty space. Darkness, then a spark, a central light. A lone figure stands revealed by in a strange ambience of purple and blue and white. In front of him, the metallic edifice of a vibraphone.

A shadowy, unstable and misanthropic character, died mysteriously from a knife wound inflicted by an unknown assailant, Jean-Marie Leclair is the real creator of the French violin school and one of the greatest violinists of the Eighteenth Century. His prolific output, almost exclusively devoted to the violin, consists of a series of collections of sonatas published throughout his lifetime, in which stand out 48 sonatas for violin and bass (four volumes). The First Book of Sonatas for Solo Violin with Basso Continuo dates from 1723 and represents Leclair’s first publication. Four sonatas are performed here by Fabio Biondi, one of the most authoritative Baroque performers, joined by an all-star continuo group featuring Rinaldo Alessandrini, Pascal Monteilhet and Maurizio Naddeo.

That Baïlèro, a shepherd’s song from the highlands of Auvergne sung in the Occitan dialect of the area, should become a favourite with singers ranging from Victoria de los Angeles to Sarah Brightman by way of Renée Fleming and Karita Mattila, is all because of Marie-Joseph Canteloube de Malaret. As a budding composer in Paris in the 1900s, Canteloube was unable to interest himself in the various musical cliques and currents. Instead he looked for inspiration in Auvergne in central France where he was born, starting to collect the songs of the farmers and shepherds that lived in the mountainous region. But he did so as a composer rather than a musicologist, and between 1923 and 1954 he published a total of thirty Chants d’Auvergne, arranged, harmonized and sumptuously orchestrated.

Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel celebrate twenty years together as a cello and piano duet. It is hardly surprising that they chose to mark this anniversary with the music of Brahms, a composer who has been a constant on their beautiful journey together. Beyond his two ultra-romantic sonatas, they take listeners to an even deeper emotional realm, with his lieder, splendidly "sung" by the cello!

French composers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries delighted in adorning their pieces with foreign, in particular, Italian, elements, often calling attention to them in the titles. Among the most subtle transalpine stylists was Francois Couperin, who was refining the ‘French style’ and publishing his legacy in the form of harpsichord and chamber music. His contemporary, Marin Marais, contributed his own subtle essay in the exotic, a “Suitte d’un gout etranger” published in his Fourth Book of Pieces de une et a trois viole (1717), nearly 30 years after his First Book (the epitome of French viol playing) had appeared.

The Harmonia Mundi label doesn't pay a lot of lip service to music outside of its core, Baroque and back-centered repertoire, although it has achieved some marvelous things in contemporary music and, very occasionally, the off-the-beaten-path romantic repertoire. Emmanuelle Bertrand Plays Alkan and Liszt belongs to this last category, featuring cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand and pianist Pascal Amoyel in cello and piano works of two composers not at all generally associated with chamber music, Charles-Valentin Alkan and Franz Liszt.

The other woodwind instruments have had their avant-garde champions, so why not the bassoon? French virtuoso Pascal Gallois, one-time member of Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain and currently a professor in Zurich, is certainly well qualified. His agility seems to know no bounds, circular breathing is second nature to him, and he can ease into and out of multiphonics with apparent ease.

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.