CHORUSFlorentino Calvo & Ensemble MG21SOCD401 
As we approach the 15th anniversary of our existence, it seemed important to us to return to the studio - but why and with what programme? Today, our repertoire boasts nearly fifty lovely works, fruits of our encounters and companionship with contemporary composers. Perusing this catalogue, a ridgeline emerged with, as contours, the common filiations existing between certain works and so-called popular or folk music. These could be described more globally by the term ‘pop’, whether they are traditional or indeed rock. Some of them pay tribute to emblematic figures such as Brubeck, Hendrix or Piazzolla. Ensemble MG21 will soon be 15 years old, a fine age – and it is perhaps not a coincidence – that is suitable to celebrate with the sound of this pop music that bears in it the ardor and nostalgia... of eternal youth. Florentino Calvo YVONNE LEFÉBUREUnissued Recordings, Volume 5SOCD398/99 
This is not a swansong... just barely an “Au revoir” to the great French pianist whose recordings we had the tremendous privilege of producing. Seeking to perpetuate her memory since her death in 1986, I have drawn extensively on the Lefébure collection at the INA (National Audiovisual Institute), but did not imagine discovering even more gems thanks in fact to a series of broadcasts initiated by Rémy Stricker (her former student), titled What do We Know About Music?, a sort of panorama of piano literature. This manna constitutes the primary source of the programme presented here. We naturally find major works by her favorite composers but we never tire of hearing them, so much does the pianist, whose standards are never achieved, give us spontaneous versions of the moment, always different... And here we understand all the better the dilemma between the musician and interpreter. Yvette Carbou WIDOR SYMPHONIES - A MIRACLE!Pierre Labric at St-OuenSOCD396 
For quite some time now, Yvette and I have continuously striven to rescue the recorded legacy of Pierre Labric from oblivion. To pursue this indispensable memory work there still lacked the Widor symphonies, recorded in 1971 and first released in the United States by the Musical Heritage Society. This LP set was quickly sold out and subsequently became the object of pirate transfers. The American edition suffering from a mediocre pressing, we long hesitated in using it up to the day the miracle occurred: informed of our problems, a Rouen doctor informed us that he had just acquired at auction (!) a fair number of tapes from the original collection. Thus, fifty years after their recording (in which I was allowed to take a modest part), we found ourselves in a position to give life to the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, these quasi twin compositions practically hatched the same year. This rerelase (June 2022) can only delight this prestigious musician who will celebrate his 101 birthday this same month. François Carbou GABRIEL PIERNÉSaint Francis of AssisiSOCD392/3 
In the vast panorama of turn-of-the-century French music, there are certain familiar names of whose true importance cannot be suspected, often generally summed up in a few laconic phrases relegated to footnotes. Too often reduced to his sole activity as a conductor, Gabriel Pierné is one of them. Granted, on the podium of the Concerts Colonne between 1910 and 1932, he asserted himself as one of the most fervent defenders of traditional and avant-garde music, giving the first performances of such fundamental works as Stravinsky’s Firebird (1910), Debussy’s Ibéria (1910) and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé (1911). But even though those claims to fame should be enough to justify his place in history books, the remarkable quality of his musical works deserves equal attention. Cyril Bongers COCHEREAURarities and Unpublished RecordingsSOCD365/84
Here we are not dealing with a simple repackaging of recordings previously released by Solstice even though a number of essential stages could not be missing from this chosen portrait. Above all, the music lover is invited to a complete reevaluation of the artist’s phonographic legacy: Pierre Cochereau, in all fidelity, henceforth escaping from the outsized but closed universe of his cathedral, without ceasing for an instant to be himself: the organist of Notre-Dame. Some 74% of the recordings are previously unreleased on disc and provide proof by music, repertoire and improvisation combined, that although Cochereau drew his manner and style most profoundly from Notre-Dame as much as from the continuity of a symphonist like Louis Vierne, his personality asserted itself elsewhere, in the unity of the musician and his own modernity. Michel Roubinet |
WIDOR SYMPHONIES BY LABRICThe second volume!SOCD400 
In the final years of the 19th century, Widor would twice return to the organ symphony, but in very different, renewed ways. Having more or less exhausted the ‘pianistic’ virtuosity characteristic of the genre he himself had created in his earlier, gloriously ‘profane’, concert Symphonies, he henceforth opted for a form both more interiorized and nonetheless generously developed. While giving counterpoint an important place, he added a ‘liturgical’ dimension through the introduction of a truly new component: Gregorian inspiration, height-ened by a touch of modality – a return to the old in a timeless context. Michel Roubinet MAURICE EMMANUEL - HISTORIC RECORDINGSSymphonic and Chamber WorksSOCD397 
On the occasion of the release of this new CD devoted to works by Maurice Emmanuel, I would like to salute the considerable efforts carried out over many long years by Anne Eichner, the composer’s granddaughter. Her unflagging commitment and faithful support of record producers as well as musicians have contributed to making better known the music of this erudite grandfather, who was admittedly too discrete but whose noble face is hard to forget. The works on this programme come from the inexhaustible INA archives and are performed here by top-flight artists (Maurice Maréchal, Jeanne-Marie Darré, the Parrenin Quartet, André Boutard, et al.) whose names alone invite us to a new discovery – even though these works had already been recorded. Yvette Carbou MARCEL CIAMPILive in concert, Paris 1955-56SOCD395 
Born 29 May 1891, five months to the day after the pianist Yves Nat (1890-1956), who was with him in Louis Diémer’s class at the Paris Conservatoire, Marcel Ciampi belonged to that generation of ‘historic performers’, rooted in the 19th century but served by the evolution of technology, which would have the privilege of bequeathing numerous excellent traces of his playing. Preserved on tapes, then ignored for more than six decades, the musical testimonies brought together on the present CD are remarkable in that the French Radio recorded them live before an audience in the mid-Fifties, in the course of two concerts given at the ‘Maison Gaveau’. PRÉSENCES LOINTAINES, Vol. 2Andrew Zhou, pianoSOCD394 
The title of this collection ‘Distant Presences’ pays homage to the great philosopher and musician Vladimir Jankélévitch, for whom music is still the best and perhaps only path to eternal life. Indeed, Loth’s wife hardens to stone as she turns toward the past and the future slips away, dissolving into a polyphonic fog. But the present, through the miracle of recording, brings to us Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, the flamboyant musical cousin of François Couperin, and Antoine Mariotte, who may not have been familiar to Jankélévitch, but whose inspired, romantic verve, passion in the French manner, and passages of Lisztian fiorature laid over the beautiful cantilenas of his Nocturne, would have earned his admiration. It is with Didier Rotella’s homage to Ravel that the future appears on the horizon, and in it we encounter the passion and outbursts of virtuosity, so quintessentially Ravelian, that envelop a mysterious and concealed musical fabric. Françoise Thinat YVONNE LEFÉBUREUnissued Recordings, Vol. 4SOCD389/90
The pianist to whom FY-Solstice is paying homage with the release of these rare – and in certain cases, previously unreleased – recordings belongs to the history of music in France in the 20th century. Through her teaching, participation in numerous radio broadcasts, concerts and recitals and, obviously, her discs, she was a major figure. She began recording before the Second World War during which she was a member of the Resistance from the outset. Yvonne Lefébure was, in many respects, an extraordinary woman and a musician whose freedom of judgement paid little heed to diplomacy. This may have had an adverse effect on the development of her international career [...]. Lefébure was, above all, a musician and a free woman in a world that was hardly so. Alain Lompech |
