His soon-to-be-released album includes two premiere recordings plus an unpublished 1950 piano sonata that later became the wind composition Chants alizés. A new recording of piano works by Florent Schmitt is scheduled for release in mid-2024 – one that’s particularly important in that its focus will be on late-career compositions that have never been commercially […]
Tag Archives: Ombres
It isn’t uncommon for classical composers to create alternate versions of their musical creations. Many have prepared piano reductions of their orchestral works, or done the opposite by orchestrating pieces originally written for piano. We also have numerous examples of pieces that began life as chamber music that were later orchestrated by their creators; the […]
While the French composer Florent Schmitt wrote vast quantities of music for solo and duo-pianists, the concertante pieces he composed for piano and orchestra are few. In fact, there are just two of them. One is the Symphonie Concertante, a daringly modern work Schmitt composed in 1931 on commission from Serge Koussevitzky and the […]
To say that Vincent Larderet is one of the most accomplished of the younger generation of classical pianists would be an understatement. As a Steinway Artist, Mr. Larderet has attracted international recognition by virtue of the exceptional intensity of his performances and commercial recordings, praised by critics not only in his native France but also in Continental […]
Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit is justly recognized as that composer’s most towering achievement in piano keyboard writing. Composed in 1908, this set of three pieces (Ondine, Le Gibet, Scarbo) which take their inspiration from a book by Aloysius Bertrand, are the most technically demanding and revolutionary of Ravel’s piano works. Far less well-known but equally […]