“So dense, so many notes, so many double-stops. So hard to play in tune together, so tricky to balance and to make it sound natural. But what special notes they are!” — Michiel Weidner, Prisma String Trio In the latter part of his career, the French composer Florent Schmitt turned his attention to musical […]
Tag Archives: Jean Cras
Published in English and French versions, the book is available for viewing and download free of charge. Recently, the music publishing firm Durand-Salabert-Eschig (part of Universal Music Publishing Group) released a book titled A French Touch: Rediscovering a Uniquely French Symphonic Repertoire. Researched and written by French musicologist and author Nicolas Southon, the slender volume (44 pages long) […]
This month, the French conductor Fabien Gabel revealed his plans to lead the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in a December 2016 performance of Florent Schmitt’s tone picture Rêves, Opus 65 (Dreams), composed just over a century ago. In subsequent discussions with the Maestro, I discovered how much he is doing to program French repertoire from the late […]
Recently, the INA archives (French National Radio and Television) has begun offering for download a memorial concert held in honor of Florent Schmitt. The concert, which was broadcast in October 1958 two months following the composer’s death, has never been made available since its initial airing until now. The memorial program featured five works by Schmitt including […]
The recent release of the premiere recording of Florent Schmitt’s Introït, récit et congé, Op. 113, has given lovers of French music and cello music in general the opportunity to hear an interesting and inventive concertante piece that was composed in 1948 for the French cellist André Navarra. Fortunately, this premiere recording (on the Timpani label) […]