A link with music history: French composer Pierrette Mari’s remembrances of Florent Schmitt during the 1950s.

In a September 2025 interview, the 96-year-old composer shares her recollections of Florent Schmitt and his distinctive personality. In this year of 2025, it is difficult to imagine that there are any musicians alive who’d have had personal interactions with French composer Florent Schmitt. After all, Schmitt passed away in 1958, and nearly seven decades […]

Conductor Fabien Gabel is interviewed by Crescendo Magazine about his new recording with Håkan Hardenberger, featuring French music for trumpet and orchestra including Florent Schmitt’s Suite en trois parties (1955).

June 16, 2022 · by Phillip Nones | in French Composers | tagged Betsy Jolas, BIS, Claude Tomasi, Crescendo Magazine, Desire Inghelbrecht, Dutilleux, Fabien Gabel, Florent Schmitt, Franck Villard, Hakan Hardenberger, Henri Tomasi, Jas Doets, Jean Huchot, Jolivet, Pierre-Jean Tribot, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Schmitt, Stravinsky | 1 Comment

In June 2022, the BIS label is releasing an important new recording that features French trumpet repertoire performed by the noted soloist Håkan Hardenberger along with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Fabien Gabel. The recording is the realization of Mr. Hardenberger’s goal to record the trumpet concertante works of Henri Tomasi, André Jolivet, […]

Musicologist Suddhaseel Sen talks about the artistry of Florent Schmitt and the importance of his “orientalist” compositions.

August 15, 2017 · by Phillip Nones | in Classical Music, Composers, French Composers | tagged Albert Roussel, Balzan Research Project, Bibliotheque Nationale, Chabrier, Dutilleux, Edward Said, ESRA Congress, European Shakespeare Research Association, Florent Schmitt, French Composers, Herodiade, Honegger, La Sulamite, Lionel Salter, Mediatheque Musicale Mahler, Messiaen, Naresh Sohal, Orientalism, Padmavati, Rabindranath Tagore, Reinhard Strohm, Schmitt, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Suddhaseel Sen, Villa-Lobos | 3 Comments

Musicologist, author and teacher Suddhaseel Sen comes to his appreciation of Western classical music from an interesting angle. A native of the Indian subcontinent, Dr. Sen made his first musical discoveries there, long before coming to the West for a range of music-related studies and research. Today, Dr. Sen is back in India as Assistant Professor of Humanities […]

Florent Schmitt’s Valedictory Composition: Symphony No. 2 (1957)

September 30, 2012 · by Phillip Nones | in Classical Music, Composers, French Composers | tagged Bernard Gavoty, Charles Munch, Classica, Classical Music, Cyrus Durgin, David Eccott, Dutilleux, Felix Aprahamian, Florent Schmitt, French Composers, Gustave Samazeuilh, ISCM, Jean Martinon, Leonard Slatkin, Lionel Salter, Lucien-Marie Pautrier, Marc Pincherle, Music, Nicolas Southon, Nones, ORTF Orchestra, Peter Gradenwitz, Sakari Oramo, Schmitt, Steven Kruger, Strasbourg Festival | 8 Comments

Here we have it, ladies and gentlemen: France’s missing symphony from the 1950s … It is almost impossibly beautiful, with some of the most kaleidoscopic sound-staging and effective bass sonorities you will encounter. Florent Schmitt’s Second Symphony was never precisely lost, to be sure. It’s actually the Francophone fifties which seemed to disappear and turn […]