Stavy

This release is the fruit of the French pianist Nicolas Stavy’s efforts to uncover unknown works by Dmitri Shostakovich. Spanning some fifty years of the composer’s career, these rarities include early piano pieces influenced by Chopin and the fragment of an unfinished violin sonata, but is bookended by arrangements of symphonic music, by Shostakovich himself and by Mahler, a constant influence.

« Madame Pylinska, quel est le secret de Chopin ?
― Il y a des secrets qu’il ne faut pas percer mais fréquenter : leur compagnie vous rend meilleur. »
Dans le cadre du Cycle de l’Invisible, Madame Pylinska et le secret de Chopin est un conte initiatique, plein d’intelligence et d’humour, où la musique apprend à vivre et à aimer. …

Marie Jaëll probably represents the most authoritative and accomplished expression of the nineteenth century woman musician. In spite of her coming from the provinces and despite the heavy social restrictions imposed on artists of her gender, she nonetheless succeeded in being recognized as a virtuoso, a composer and as a teacher. Support from her husband – the Austrian pianist Alfred Jaëll – greatly contributed to the positive reception of her initial works for the piano, but it was by herself, armed with her talent and her resolve in the latter part of her life, that she faced up to the Parisian hurly-burly in which she proved herself to be one of its distinctive figures.