Claves Record

Busoni / Enescu:sonatas for violinand piano

Pianist Cédric Pescia is back at Claves with a new and unique recording following his previous extraordinary releases: the “Goldberg Variations” in 2004, a double-album featuring Schumann’s piano music in 2006, and the “Folies françaises” last year. He shares the stage with violinist Nurit Stark for two sonatas composed at the turn of the 20th century. Penned by Ferruccio Busoni and George Enescu, they are the works of two truly innovative composers whose music is worth to be rediscovered. For Etienne Barilier, the author of the liner notes, their success and popularity as performers proved to be a hindrance to their reputations as composers. Neither utilized a modern compositional system or founded a school of composition, two key elements of interest to posterity… Happily, however, it is never too late, and in this sense their rediscovery is even more delightful. “Busoni and Enescu were great humanist musicians, and their compositions, magnificently singular, incontestably modern, are filled by a rich and vast sense of the musical past”, notes the author. “They are cultivated as well as audacious, but if one would like to approach their music, it is necessary to appreciate audacity as well as culture. And thus they have bequeathed us with boundless riches.” Wonderful listening…