LDV122

22 CHAUSSON, RAVEL ∙ TRIOS FOR PIANO, VIOLIN AND CELLO Your disc opens with Chausson’s Trio, a piece of unprecedented power, composed by a twenty-six-year-old in the summer of 1881. He had just failed the Prix de Rome competition, and rather than turn to opera, which was the most effective way of gaining recognition, he preferred to start work on a trio, almost as a challenge of swaggering youth . . . Nathan Mierdl: That’s why we thought it was appropriate to associate a work of such symphonic density with another that’s written in a ‘pointillist’ spirit. A juxtaposition of two such dissimilar scores! The Romantic style, clearly tinged with ‘Germanic’ elements in Chausson’s Trio, was to break free from them a few years later and return to a more typically French world in the Poème for violin and orchestra, completed in 1896 Victor Metral: It’s true that Chausson’s style lends itself to broad lyrical developments and also encourages musicians to ‘let themselves go’, while always keeping in mind an exact idea of just how far they can do so. This is not the case with Ravel, who handles the art of the miniature with genius and offers a framework so precise that it would almost be enough just to play what’s written.