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Jonathan Leibovitz Joseph Havlat Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux

EASTERN REFLECTIONS BARTÓK LUTOSŁAWSKI WEINBERG LIGETI

EASTERN REFLECTIONS Jonathan Leibovitz clarinet Joseph Havlat piano (tracks 1–9, 11–14) Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux violin (tracks 1–3, 10)

Béla Bartók (1881–1945) 1 2 3 4 György Ligeti (1923–2006)

Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994)

Contrasts for violin, clarinet and piano (1938) I. Verbunkos (Recruiting Dance) II. Pihenő (Relaxation) III. Sebes (Fast Dance) A bujdosó [The errant one] (1952) No 4 from Öt Arany-dal: Five Songs on Poems by János Arany

[5:20] [4:55] [6:44] [4:05]

Dance Preludes for clarinet and piano (1955) I. Allegro molto II. Andantino III. Allegro giocoso IV. Andante V. Allegro molto

[0:55] [2:49] [1:11] [3:29] [1:35]

Baladă și joc [Ballad and Dance] (1950)

[2:51]

13

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 28 (1945) I. Allegro II. Allegretto III. Adagio

[6:13] [7:14] [7:21]

14 Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)

Prelude No 17 [in A flat major]

[1:59]

5 6 7 8 9 10 György Ligeti

Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996) 11 12

from 24 Preludes, Op. 34 (1932–33)

Total playing time

[56:49]

An exciting collaboration

Notes on the music

Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) has been at the forefront of international artist development since 1984 – nurturing and launching some of the most significant careers on the world stage, including Ian Bostridge, Alison Balsom, the Belcea Quartet, and Delphian artists Sean Shibe and Philip Higham.

Following on from Tabea Debus, LSO principal oboe Olivier Stankiewicz, longstanding violin/piano duo Benjamin Baker and Daniel Lebhardt, and accordionist Samuele Telari joined the Delphian family with releases in spring and summer 2021. The Castalian String Quartet joined the series in spring 2022, and the cellist Maciej Kułakowski at the end of that year. The series draws to a close in 2024 and early 2025 with releases from violist Jordan Bak, clarinettist Jonathan Leibovitz and violinist Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux. The complete collection will offer audiences around the world an engaging and varied series of albums, covering repertoire from the fourteenth century to the present day.

Released in August 2020 to great acclaim both in the UK press and internationally, recorder player Tabea Debus’s recital album Ohrwurm inaugurated a partnership between Delphian Records and YCAT which the two organisations have specially tailored to offer precious recording opportunities for the most promising young artists. The collaboration unites YCAT’s mission of developing careers at a world-class level with Delphian’s twenty-year Delphian and YCAT are indebted to the reputation for bold, considered programming. generosity of Alastair and Liz Storey From initial concept planning, through that supports this partnership. recording and editing to the final packaged and digital product, the scheme reflects and enhances both Delphian’s and YCAT’s commitments to nurturing their musicians’ artistic development and long-term careers. www.ycat.co.uk Recorded on 31 October - 2 November 2023 at St Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis 24-bit digital mixing & mastering: Paul Baxter Piano: Steinway model D, serial no 600443 (2016) Piano technician: Norman Motion

Cover photograph © Clara Evens Session photography: Will Coates‑Gibson/ foxbrushfilms.com Design: John Christ Booklet editor: John Fallas Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com

@ delphianrecords @ delphianrecords @ delphian_records

The middle of the twentieth century was a period of tremendous conflict and upheaval, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe.

In the years directly before and after World War Two, composers from Hungary, Poland and Soviet Russia responded to disruption, war, exile and political authoritarianism through a variety of expressive and technical means, integrating elements of folk music into pieces which reveal the competing desire for light-hearted escape and for an acknowledgment of darker moods.

Béla Bartók wrote his Contrasts for a trio of violin, clarinet and piano in 1938. It is unique among Bartók’s chamber music, in that it is the only piece that includes a wind instrument, and it is the only one to be relatively light-hearted in character. The piece was a commission from the American jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman, who even went so far as to specify the character of the commission, requesting something similar to Bartók’s earlier Rhapsodies for violin and piano, in two movements and with a duration of 6-7 minutes (designed to fit on the two sides of a 78rpm gramophone record). The work that eventually resulted was much longer.

The outer movements were composed first, and Joseph Szigeti, Goodman and the pianist Endre Petri gave them a first outing under the title ‘Two Dances’. Once Bartók had inserted the slow central movement, the finished

piece was premiered by Goodman and Szigeti with the composer himself at the piano.

Bartók claimed to have taken inspiration from Hungarian and Romanian folksongs for Contrasts, but any resemblance in the finished work is highly stylised. The first movement draws on the 18th-century Hungarian ‘verbunkos’ genre, typically consisting of a slow section with dotted rhythm followed by a fast-moving virtuosic second part. In Bartók’s version, the piece opens with a march-like dance that features a still considerable element of melodic decoration. This is followed by a rapid second section with moto perpetuo figuration, with some humorous allusions to folk-like tuning (or lack thereof) in the violin part. The movement concludes with a brief cadenza for clarinet, another allusion to the virtuosic display typically encountered in the original verbunkos. The second movement is titled ‘Relaxation’ – a sort of interlude – and it bears no resemblance to any established folk genre. If anything, it is closer to Bartók’s ‘nocturne’ style, as heard in works like the Fifth Quartet. The constrained tension of the movement is in contradiction to its title: the rigid atmosphere does little to suggest anything ‘relaxing’. The finale returns to more folk-like means, beginning with the instruction for the violinist to retune the outer strings and also drawing expressive colour from so-called ‘dual thirds’, whereby a chord simultaneously

Notes on the music contains the major and minor third. In its sublimation of vernacular inspirations into a substantial chamber piece, Contrasts makes an effective vehicle for virtuoso ensembles.

The influence of Bartók can be faintly heard in Mieczysław Weinberg’s 1945 clarinet sonata, which arguably presents something closer to the light-hearted tone that Goodman had in mind. Weinberg’s writing reflects the postwar optimism that Bartók himself never lived to see, but also inhabits a distinctly Eastern European political context, with the clouds of the Cold War about to arrive. By the end of the war, Weinberg had undergone a radical but painful transformation from his pre-war childhood in Warsaw. He had fled Poland in 1939, leaving his parents and sister, and was granted entry to the Soviet Union only to have to flee again following another Nazi invasion in 1941. By 1945 he had settled in Moscow at Shostakovich’s personal invitation, and his life had assumed the kind of normalcy that allowed him to devote time to chamber works, including a piano quintet, a rapid succession of string quartets, and this Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 28. Weinberg’s wider output for the clarinet includes a full concerto, and there is a prominent solo clarinet role in his Chamber Symphony No 4; together, these works provide a solid contribution to the instrument’s repertoire.

The sonata is marked by its reference to klezmer elements, including in its blending of major and

minor tonalities, clarinet melodies that invite expressive slides between notes, and the mini-cadenzas that appear for the clarinettist.

The piece is cast in three movements, with the opening establishing a whimsical and light-hearted tone, indicating something of the brief optimistic period between the end of the Second World War and the start of renewed Stalinist crackdowns in the Soviet Union. Weinberg set aside the stringent experimentation that he pursued in other pieces written at the same time and instead gives a humorous or even nostalgic mood for the opening movement. The clarinet begins solo with a playful melody, joined by a crystalline piano accompaniment. A brief but stormy central section leads into the piano’s restatement of the opening melody, now in an assertive and bold minor key; the concluding section is marked by hints of doubt, and the overall sense of a darkening of the initially playful mood remains. The middle Allegretto movement possesses a naive character that is perhaps rooted in Weinberg’s experience of playing in pre-war cafes and salons, but like the opening movement, it soon moves to explore darker territory. It is this movement that features the strongest klezmer influence.

The emotional heart of the work is in its finale; the piano opens with a heartfelt solo, whose intensity provides a foil to the light-heartedness of the first two movements. The work ends

with an allusion to the opening clarinet melody, but now appearing to fade away into some dark corner. Ending with a slow movement may seem unusual, but it came to be a stock device in Weinberg’s chamber music.

The postwar era brought a distinct shadow across Eastern Europe as newly installed communist states began to impose their will on the arts. This had a profound effect on a generation of composers, including Witold Lutosławski. Starting from 1949, the Polish government instructed composers to write tuneful and accessible music in parallel with the music of Soviet ‘socialist realism’. Polish composers begrudgingly wrote optimistic and tuneful music, but the intrusion also prompted renewed interest and studies in Polish folk music. Lutosławski’s Dance Preludes for clarinet and piano is a product of this time period. Lutosławski had originally written just the final Allegro molto, which was accepted for publication in 1953, but then followed it with four more. The work is partly based on folk songs from northern Poland, with those for the first two movements taken from a collection edited and published by Łucjan Kamieński in 1936; the sources for the remaining three have not yet been identified.

hurtling staccato variation upon it, with jerky time signature changes indicating restless energy. The second, slower movement shifts to minor mode, but rhythmic changes remain throughout, now alternating 9/8 and 6/8 bars to create an uneven feel. No 3 presents an energetic scherzo in the clarinet’s high register, with acciaccatura snatched notes ornamenting the melody. If any of the dances were to be of Lutosławski’s own invention, rather than derived from original melodies, this prelude certainly has many of the authentic hallmarks of folk music from Northern Poland.

The fourth movement is much slower, with a constrained melodic range, but the rhythmic shifts continue – now between 3/4 and 3/2, giving an uneasy pulse. The final dance is by far the most rhythmically complex, with a Stravinsky-like propensity to keep changing time signature. The ambitious sense of flow creates a celebratory mood and provides the set with a rousing conclusion. Polish socialist realism began to die away by the mid-1950s, and Lutosławski proclaimed the end of the era publicly in 1957. He called the Dance Preludes his ‘farewell to folklore for an indefinite period’, referring to the discomfort with which he and a whole generation of composers had had to endure state meddling in their art.

The first dance repeats the folk tune source’s arpeggiated melody that blends minor and major scales and then quickly presents a

There is a marked influence of Bartók (as well as his compatriot Kodály) in György Ligeti’s Baladă și joc (Ballad and Dance), one of

Notes on the music his earliest works. The piece dates from his student days at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest; Ligeti had spent his final year of university on fieldwork in Romania, recording folk songs and dances. From this fieldwork, he composed several pieces on Romanian folk themes. Baladă s‚i joc was originally written for two violins and is here performed on violin and clarinet. The ‘Ballad’ is, despite its name, still a sprightly work, with frequent juxtaposition of 2/8 and 3/8 time signatures.

The ‘Dance’ remains in the same time signature throughout, but is more energetic, with plenty of syncopations between the two instruments. Ligeti orchestrated the two movements and added a finale to produce his Romanian Concerto (1951). Both the concerto and this duo were held back from performance by the Hungarian authorities, who objected to their dissonances even in the context of a folk-like style. This ban, combined with the composer’s 1956 exile from Hungary and rapid progress towards the avant-garde style which made him famous in the 1960s, meant that both works went unheard for several decades, only re-emerging towards the end of the composer’s life.

János Arany (1817–1882) has often been described as the ‘Hungarian Shakespeare’, especially in his favoured poetic form of the ballad – of which he wrote more than a hundred. In 1952, in his late twenties and

still fresh from his university studies, Ligeti set five of them to music. He picked texts that speak of grieving and angst, some indication of his Bartókian ambition to attain a ‘Hungarian modernity’. In the fourth of the set, A bujdosó (‘The Errant One’), Arany’s protagonist compares themself to the grieving dove and nightingale, who have lost their companion, but laments that they will never find another, and nor do they have any home to return to.

The opening may recall Debussy’s ‘Des pas sur la neige’ with its semitonal hesitations, but the lyrical melody quickly unfurls more of a searching and yearning character. Ligeti himself credited the influence of Bartók and Kodály on the Arany songs but acknowledged that their relative adventurousness in terms of harmony placed them ‘on the edge of what could be performed’ in the political climate of the time; indeed, like the slightly earlier duo and the Romanian Concerto, the music treads a fine line between the compulsion for ‘socialist realist’ music instilled by the Hungarian authorities (similar to that experienced by Lutosławski in Poland) and a greater individualism.

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Op. 34 set of piano preludes in 1932–33, primarily as a vehicle to return to performance. They encompass a great variety of styles and are often parodistic in tone. There has been a long history of arranging the preludes:

violinist Dmitri Tsïganov transcribed nineteen of them for piano and violin (the remaining five were added by Lera Auerbach in 2000), and Leopold Stokowski arranged No 14 for orchestra in 1935. That tradition is continued here, with Prelude No 17 arranged by the present performers for clarinet and piano (and transposed from the original A flat major to E flat). This prelude features a gentle waltz, though it soon strays from the 3/4 dance metre of the genre. The movement away from both the home key and the waltz rhythm present ongoing diversions, but the prelude always returns to both – though a skittish and nervous character remains throughout. In its own way, it encapsulates the theme which threads through this entire album: that of a search for optimism amid ongoing clouds on the horizon. © 2024 Daniel Elphick Daniel Elphick is a Lecturer in Musicology at Royal Holloway, University of London, where his research focuses on questions of politics and analysis in Slavonic and Eastern European music. Dan is a convenor of the Slavonic and East European Music study group for BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies); a Fellow of the Centre for Russian Music at Goldsmiths, University of London; and a member of the editorial board for DSCH, the Shostakovich journal. He is the author of Music Behind the Iron Curtain: Weinberg and his Polish Contemporaries (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Biographies Born in Tel Aviv in 1997, Jonathan Leibovitz began his musical education with Eva Wasserman. He went on to study with Yevgeny Yehudin at the Buchmann Mehta School of Music, winning numerous awards including First Prize laureate of the Aviv Competition (2020) and the Israeli Wind Competition (2016 and 2018). In 2022 Jonathan completed his master’s degree at the Music Academy in Basel with François Benda, and is currently staying on in Basel to complete a ‘master soloist’ degree.

Jonathan was recently announced as a Borletti–Buitoni Fellowship Award artist (2024), and was previously a grand prizewinner at the Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) and Concert Artists Guild (New York) international auditions in 2022. During the same year he went on to receive the prestigious Arthur Waser Foundation and Lucerne Symphony Orchestra Award, and was also a top prizewinner at major competitions in Israel and Europe, including First Prize at the prestigious Crusell Competition in Finland and a Special Prize at the Carl Nielsen Competition in Denmark. He was also nominated as a Classic FM ‘Rising Star’ 2022.

Jonathan made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of eighteen, performing Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. He has since performed concertos with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Slovak State Philharmonic Košice, Haifa Symphony Orchestra, Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, Lapland Chamber Orchestra and Kuopio Symphony Orchestra.

An avid chamber musician, Jonathan has performed throughout Europe and beyond, including at the Kiel Musikfreunde, Brandenburgische Sommerkonzerte, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Bendigo Chamber Music Festival in Australia and on tour to Colombia. Jonathan also founded the Avir Wind Quintet, and has collaborated with the Mietar Ensemble and Israeli Contemporary Players.

Highlights of Jonathan’s current season include performances at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, Konzerthaus Berlin and Concertgebouw Amsterdam, plus numerous appearances in the UK, including at Saffron Hall, Wigmore Hall and St George’s Bristol, as well as a concerto performance with the London Firebird Orchestra at St George’s Hanover Square.

Joseph Havlat is a pianist and composer from Hobart, Australia, based in London, who has performed in major concert venues around the UK, Europe, America, Japan and Australia.

Joseph studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London under Joanna MacGregor from 2012–18, receiving his BMus and MMus with distinction and also awards for exceptional merit in studentship and the highest recital mark for a postgraduate pianist. He has been a Young Artist of St John’s Smith Square, Oxford Lieder Festival and Kirckman Concert Society, and was a first prize winner of the Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition.

Joseph is a leading interpreter of new music, having collaborated with such composers as Hans Abrahamsen, John Adams, Thomas Adès, Gerald Barry, Brett Dean, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Michael Finnissy and Thomas Larcher. As a chamber musician he has performed with William Bennett, James Ehnes, Steven Isserlis, Katalin Károlyi and Jack Liebeck, as well as with regular duo partners Lotte Betts­- Dean and Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux. As a composer he has written music spanning from solo voice to large ensemble, including for Ensemble x.y, of which he was a founding member.

Recent highlights include Adès’ In Seven Days with the LSO under the baton of the composer, and the premiere of the same composer’s Növények. In 2023 Joseph made his solo recital debuts at King’s Place and Wigmore Hall, London, where he appears five times in the 2023–24 season. Joseph has been featured on several recent recordings: Finnissy vocal works with Lotte Betts-Dean and the Marsyas Trio (Divine Art / Métier), works by Lisa Illean and Rebecca Saunders with Explore Ensemble (Huddersfield Contemporary Records), and two solo albums, one featuring Czech and Hungarian folk music and the other the premiere recording of Isabella Gellis’s The Dissolute Society Comprised of All Sorts. He has begun a fruitful collaboration with Delphian Records, with whom a further YCAT release with Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux is currently in post-production and two more albums are planned for 2025, one with Lotte Betts-Dean and one with violist and composer Sally Beamish.

Joseph teaches piano at the Royal Academy of Music.

Biographies Born in France, violinist Charlotte SalusteBridoux was the 2021 grand prizewinner of the Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) and Concert Artist Guild (New York) international auditions. Recent highlights include appearances at Wigmore Hall, a BBC Prom with the dynamic 12 Ensemble and a performance of César Franck’s Piano Quintet at the Gstaadt Festival with Alina Ibragimova, Lawrence Power, Sol Gabetta and Bertrand Chamayou.

An avid chamber musician, Charlotte has taken part in Open Chamber Music at IMS Prussia Cove, the Santander Encuentro Festival, East Neuk Festival, the Musethica Festivals in Zaragoza and Berlin, the Evian Festival in France and Stift Festival in Holland.

Charlotte enjoys playing a wide variety of repertoire, including rarely heard solo concertos by Panufnik, Vasks and Joachim, the latter of which she has performed, alongside Bernstein’s Serenade, with the Budapest Concerto Orchestra conducted by András Keller.

Charlotte currently plays a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, kindly loaned to her by the Swiss foundation Boubo-Music.

Also available on Delphian ‘1942’: Prokofiev – Copland – Poulenc (YCAT Vol 3) Benjamin Baker, Daniel Lebhardt

Mozart: Sonatas K 304, K 378 & K 454 (YCAT Vol 2) Olivier Stankiewicz, Jonathan Ware

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Since winning First Prize at the 2016 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York, New Zealand-born violinist Benjamin Baker has established a presence across the globe, with acclaimed solo, chamber and concerto appearances on five continents. His Delphian recording debut sees him joined by regular duo partner Daniel Lebhardt in a programme of three powerful works which were all begun in 1942.

Each marked in its own way by a world at war, these sonatas show three of the twentieth century’s most individual composers engaging themes of private loss, political uncertainty and music’s enduring ability both to reflect and to transcend circumstance.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the craft of transcription reached its zenith. Popular works such as favourite opera arias were offered to the public in domestically playable versions, and chamber and orchestral works published with alternative scoring options or reworked entirely for different instruments. Thus taking its place in a now somewhat buried tradition that has its roots in the composer’s own time, this cherishable recording by LSO principal oboist Olivier Stankiewicz reimagines three of his best-loved violin sonatas for oboe and piano.

‘Baker and Lebhardt are superb partners, with a rare passion and energy’ — Apple Music, April 2021

‘The expansive K454 and the genial K378 come off exceptionally well …

Jonathan Ware is an ever-attentive co-conspirator’ — Gramophone, August 2021

J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations (YCAT Vol 4) Samuele Telari accordion

Ohrwurm (YCAT Vol 1) Tabea Debus, Jonathan Rees, Alex McCartney

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Samuele Telari’s instrument is essential to his conception of this eternally fresh, kaleidoscopic work. The accordion’s bellows bring out and intensify dynamic contrasts in the slower variations, while the sparkling, faster ones are powered by a pure virtuosity that flows along the two manuals, imitating or chasing one another in resonant stereophony. Bach’s immortal masterpiece shines with new light here, keyboard dexterity meeting a string-like expressivity, both heightened by Telari’s interpretative subtlety and impeccable control.

Rising talent Tabea Debus makes an immediate impression as she joins the roster of Delphian house artists, coaxing an astonishing spectrum of moods and timbres from an array of Renaissance and Baroque recorders.

Equally astounding is the tightness and responsiveness of her interaction with gamba player Jonathan Rees and lutenist Alex McCartney, while solos for recorder alone bookend the programme chronologically with music from the fourteenth century and the twenty-first.

‘The whole recording is joyful’ — BBC Radio 3 Record Review, July 2021

PRESTO

Editor’s Choice August 2020

‘There’s a lovely sense of affectionate irreverence … Renaissance and Baroque works are despatched with an almost folky exuberance, and it’s a toe-tapping joy’ — Presto Classical, August 2020, EDITOR’S CHOICE

Also available on Delphian

PRESTO

Recordings of the Year 2022 – Finalist

Between Two Worlds (YCAT Vol 5) Castalian String Quartet

Cantabile: Anthems for Viola (YCAT Vol 7) Jordan Bak, Richard Uttley

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From the darkness of night emerges day, the cycle of nature tracing the journey of the soul. The finely calibrated emotions of Orlande de Lassus’s song La nuit froide et sombre, and of his near-contemporary John Dowland’s Come, heavy sleep, are made newly vivid in transcriptions by the Castalian String Quartet, framing a programme which exists both inside and beyond time. Profound meditations on immortality and worldliness from Beethoven and Thomas Adès receive readings of extraordinary intensity, the Quartet’s burnished tone and astounding interconnectedness making this a debut that demands to be heard.

The Jamaican-American violist Jordan Bak has already achieved international acclaim for his radiant stage presence and dynamic interpretations. His Delphian debut sets two substantial twentieth-century works – Arnold Bax’s Sonata for Viola and Piano and Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae: Reflections on a Song of John Dowland, written respectively for Lionel Tertis and William Primrose – alongside unaccompanied pieces by Jonathan Harvey and Bright Sheng. The viola’s capacity for deeply felt, wordless song is further explored in Augusta Read Thomas’s Song without Words, receiving its premiere recording in a version specially composed for Bak and Uttley.

perfection, felt like a miracle’ — The Observer, January 2020

‘Bak is clearly going places … His pianist, Richard Uttley, is daringly empathetic. If you don’t love the viola, you will after hearing this’ — Norman Lebrecht, The Critic, April 2024

Beau Soir: Debussy – Satie – Ravel – Poulenc (YCAT Vol 6) Maciej Kułakowski, Jonathan Ware

Origines et départs: French music for clarinet and piano Maximiliano Martín, Scott Mitchell

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Acclaimed young cellist Maciej Kułakowski (Lutosławski International Cello Competition 2015, First Prize; Queen Elisabeth Competition 2017, Laureate) is partnered by pianist Jonathan Ware in an all-French recital programme that mingles the familiar with the reimagined. Elements of ‘Spanish’ style, blues and jazz, and the ironic humour of the Parisian café, encountered in sonatas by Debussy, Poulenc and Ravel (Kułakowski’s cello rendering of the latter’s second violin sonata), are echoed in a brace of shorter works that includes several further transcriptions – of three short pieces by Debussy and of Satie’s Trois Gnossiennes.

Born in the Canary Islands and resident for many years in Scotland, clarinettist Maximiliano Martín here explores the ways in which music can express national character as well as tracking more personal life journeys. Maxi’s infectious personality is reflected in this deeply personal album, a joyous exploration of French repertoire (from the tenderness of Saint-Saëns’s Clarinet Sonata to the playfulness of Poulenc’s) that is supplemented by recent works from the two places he calls home: exquisite miniatures from the Scottish composer Eddie McGuire and the Tenerife-born Gustavo Trujillo.

‘Cellist and pianist convey the meaning of every crescendo or change of tempo, however minimal, proving that tiny details can have huge effects … The “wackiness” of Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc has rarely been better demonstrated’ — BBC Music Magazine, December 2022, FIVE STARS

‘The performances are strong, at times strikingly intense … large in gesture and scale’ — Gramophone, April 2022

���� ‘To hear this music, so full of poetry, joy and sorrow, realised to such

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