
Cristina Ariagno (piano)
| Louis
Aubert was born in Brittany in 1877 and soon showed promise as a singer, but his
real skill was as a pianist. He studied with Fauré, and Maurice Ravel was
another fellow student with whom he would develop a lasting friendship. Later,
Ravel would choose his old friend to give the premiere of his Valses nobles et
sentimentales. By
no means a prolific composer, Aubert's slim output contains some fascinating music,
including a powerful Fantasie for piano and orchestra, and for voice and orchestra
Poèmes arabes, La Fôret bleue, Feuille d?images, Offrande and Cinéma.
He
died in 1968 having succeeded Florent Schmitt as director of the Société
Nationale de Musique. Sadly his death went almost without comment in the French
press. In the age of Boulez, he was viewed as a relic from a long-vanished world.
This was a great shame, for his output contains works of high quality that repay
discovery, and this Brilliant Classics release provides a superb opportunity to
do so. It includes his masterpiece for piano, Sillages, which produces orchestral
sonorities from the piano. |

Massimo Marin (violin),
Manuel Zigante (cello), Cristina Ariagno (piano)
|
This
2CD set covers her compositional career from the early period of 1912-20 where
she shows clear influences of Faure and Debussy, through to the 1930-50 period
when her mature voice as a composer was truly established. The sonatina of 1973
is a remarkably fresh work, justifying Milhaud's comment 'Germaine Tailleferre's
music is always twenty years old'. Cristina
Ariagno has also recorded the complete piano music of Satie for Brilliant Classics |