(2026) IMPRESSIONS
Category(ies): Chamber Piano
Instrument(s): Piano Violin
Main Composer: Various composers (see collections)
CD set: 1
Catalog N°:
CD 3166
Release: 20.11.2026
EAN/UPC: 7619931316628
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VAT included for Switzerland & UE
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This album is now on repressing. Pre-order it at a special price now.
CHF 18.50
This album is no longer available on CD.
This album has not been released yet.
Pre-order it at a special price now.
CHF 18.50
This album is no longer available on CD.
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This album is no longer available on CD.
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Lively and enthusiastic, Amia Janicki makes no secret of her admiration for George Enescu (1881–1955), an artist she describes as “well-rounded, humble, and so devoted to music in all its forms, from teaching to the violin and the piano”. The violinist – who has a particular love for 20th-century repertoire – recorded Enescu’s admirable Octet in 2023 for the Belgian label Fuga Libera. Three years later, she places the Romanian composer’s Impressions d’enfance (Childhood impressions), Op. 28, at the heart of her first solo album.
Of Austrian, Polish, and Japanese heritage, Amia Janicki is especially attuned to the interplay between modernity and tradition, and between folklore and so-called “classical” music. Yet her artistic commitment goes further. The young Swiss violinist, who studied in Geneva with Tedi Papavrami and in Vienna under Pavel Vernikov, is a laureate of numerous international competitions including the Jean Sibelius International Violin Competition, and a former artist-in-residence at the Chapelle Reine Elisabeth (in Augustin Dumay’s class). She dreams of a performing career not confined to the stage, but one that takes on a more creative dimension, connecting the concert hall experience to other artistic fields. Amia Janicki enjoys weaving connections between the arts, and her identity as a musician is also defined through collaborations, such as the one she developed in 2022–2023 with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui on his ballet Ukiyo-e.
It is through collaboration that she approaches the creation of George Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance. A highly virtuosic piece, it is also one of the composer’s few programmatic works, evoking highly visual atmospheres. The violinist sees it as an opportunity to introduce 20th-century music to non-specialist audiences. Rather than producing a mere visual illustration of the soundscapes, she initiated the creation of a short film with director Lily Landecy, featuring herself alongside pianist Kojiro Okada and narrator Denis Lavant, two long-standing collaborators. Through this short film, Amia Janicki hopes to shed new light on Enescu’s work, placing it within its historical context.
George Enescu’s musical talent was recognised very early on; he was just eight years old when he left his native Romania to study music, first in Vienna and then in Paris. His career unfolded between Paris and Bucharest, before his definitive exile during the communist era. His style evolved continuously. His early works resonate with the influence of Brahms and his teacher Gabriel Fauré, whilst also drawing inspiration from Romanian folklore. He rapidly integrated the quarter-tone into his musical language, and listeners are constantly struck by the heterophonic and rhythmic richness of his works. Moreover, this apparent simplicity conceals a profound complexity that defies analysis, prompting Harry Halbreich to write: “If an early work such as the brilliant Octet, completed at the age of nineteen, already equals Schoenberg in combinatorial and formal richness, what then of the mature works!”
When Enescu composed his Impressions d’enfance in 1940 – the same year as his celebrated Piano Quintet – he was approaching sixty. In a Europe at war, the composer had recently moved to Romania and turned to his childhood memories. His Impressions harbour a profound nostalgia, but also a certain bitterness, as Amia Janicki points out. Divided into ten linked movements with evocative titles, they form a vast poem that takes the listener on a journey from day to night. The violin soars forth alone in “Le Ménétrier” (The Country Fiddler) – the piano entering only in the second piece – in a long, improvised melody that explores the full range of the instrument’s timbres. After a nostalgic evocation of the “Vieux mendiant” (The Old Beggar) comes “L’Oiseau en cage” (The Bird in the Cage), in which the violin mimics the bird’s song, establishing an increasingly unsettling and menacing atmosphere. The “Chanson pour bercer” (Lullaby), with its folk-like, comforting, and haunting touch, sounds reminiscent of ancient lullabies from the depths of time. “La lune” (The Moon) glimpsed “à travers les vitres” (Through the Windowpanes) leads to the “Vent dans la cheminée” (Wind in the Chimney), and then to the “Tempête au dehors dans la nuit” (Storm Outside in the Night), evoking the nocturnal fears of childhood, before the “Lever de soleil” (Sunrise) unfolds, first poetic and light, then gradually revealing warmth, ardour, and the joy of life’s return.
Whilst George Enescu drew inspiration from his Romanian childhood and dedicated the work to his first violin teacher, Eduard Caudella, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) conceived his Divertimento during the same decade, equally as a tribute to a composer he deeply admired, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The work also resulted from a collaboration between the composer and the American violinist of Polish origin Samuel Dushkin, for whom Stravinsky transcribed in 1932 for violin and piano the original music from the ballet Le Baiser de la Fée (The Fairy’s Kiss), which was premiered at the Paris Opéra four years earlier. Commissioned by Ida Rubinstein and inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, this ballet led to the definitive rupture between the composer and Sergei Diaghilev. Described as “neo-classical” in style, the work draws on thematic material from several of Tchaikovsky’s early compositions. In the Divertimento, the composer reworks and condenses the work into a few movements: the Sinfonia recapitulates the action of the ballet’s first scene, in which the Snow Queen kisses a child. This is followed by the Danses suisses (Swiss Dances), which take on a folk character, and then by the three parts of the pas de deux: Adagio, Variation, and Coda. As André Boucourechliev writes in his biography of the composer, Stravinsky passed from “virtuoso juggling with Tchaikovsky’s material to a complete identification of himself with the spirit of his great predecessor, and a fascination which found expression in a great outburst of creative activity”.
Stravinsky chose an Andersen tale as the basis for The Fairy’s Kiss. Another story similarly inspired the creation, in 1971, of Ferdinand the Bull, a work by the English composer Alan Ridout (1934–1996). The picture book, written by the American author Munro Leaf, was published in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. Titled The Story of Ferdinand, it rapidly became a best-seller. It tells of a young bull who prefers looking at flowers to fighting others. A prolific composer with a largely tonal style, Alan Ridout chose the solo violin to illustrate – alongside the narrator – the atmosphere, emotions, and humour of this tale, which has retained all its freshness.
Each of the works selected for this debut album resonates as a nod to the world of childhood. And Harold Noben’s Yōkai is no exception. In 2020, Amia Janicki discovered Noben’s music whilst performing his chamber opera À l’extrême bord du monde (At the Very Edge of the World) at La Monnaie in Brussels, a work that evokes the tragic end of Stefan Zweig and his wife Lotte. Amia Janicki immediately decided to commission a violin piece from him to feature in this programme. Inspired by the world of childhood and folklore, and recalling her Japanese origins, she suggested to the composer that they explore the Yōkai, those fantastic creatures typical of Japanese folk tradition, sometimes described as monsters, sometimes as spirits, sometimes mischievous, sometimes malevolent, but most often playful in nature. Composed for violin, piano, and narrator, the work presents, after a prologue, the characters of several of these Yōkai, set to words and music by Harold Noben. The music thus re-enchants the world and, just as in Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance, weaves links between the human and supernatural realms, constituting, perhaps, one of the finest characteristics of modernity in music.
Bénédicte Gandois
Translation: Michelle Bulloch – Musitext
AMIA JANICKI
A committed young performer, Amia Janicki shares music on stage, but also promotes her own creative work. Passionate about interdisciplinary projects, the Swiss violinist co-created the short film L’Oiseau, produced by Le Hangar production and inspired by Georges Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance, Op. 28, which was released in 2023. This project arose from a collaboration blending the worlds of cinema and music. She also worked with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in 2022–2023 on his ballet Ukiyo-e.
A laureate of the Jean Sibelius International Violin Competition and winner of First Prize at the Václav Huml International Violin Competition, Amia was artist-in-residence at the Queen Elisabeth Chapel in Augustin Dumay’s class, and obtained a master’s degree in solo performance at the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne under Svetlana Makarova. She was trained in her youth by Tedi Papavrami in Geneva.
She performs at prestigious venues and festivals such as the Musikverein, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Bozar and the La Roque-d’Anthéron Festival, and plays with orchestras such as the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tonkünstler Orchestra, and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra.
In 2023, she also recorded Enescu’s Octet for Fuga Libera. Amia plays a 1645 violin by Niccolò Amati, on loan from the Maggini Foundation with the support of LS Core.
From the 2026 academic year, she will join the LUCA School of Arts as a violin teacher, and also the Zurich University of the Arts as an assistant to Andreas Janke.
KOJIRO OKADA
Born in Bordeaux in 1999, Kojiro Okada began learning the piano at the age of seven with Anne-Lise Gastaldi. From a very young age, he has performed at several prestigious venues, notably at the Salle Pleyel in 2010 for the bicentenary of Chopin, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 2013, at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2022, followed by the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and La Seine Musicale in 2024. He also performs regularly at the Salle Cortot and the Salle de Musique in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
His international engagements include two chamber music tours of North America: in 2022 with violist Miguel da Silva, and then in March 2025 with several renowned partners. He recently performed at the Seoul Arts Centre with violinist Augustin Dumay in a complete cycle of Brahms’ sonatas. A regular guest at numerous festivals, including the Nohant Chopin Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron, the Folles Journées de Nantes and the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, he is also a regular guest at Flagey in Brussels.
A passionate chamber musician, Kojiro was the pianist with the Trio Pantoum until 2025, with whom he recorded for La Dolce Volta. He now maintains a busy schedule as a soloist and chamber musician, notably performing in a duo with his brother, the violinist Shuichi Okada. He has collaborated with artists such as Nicholas Angelich, Jean- Efflam Bavouzet, Frank Braley, Miguel da Silva, Gary Hoffman, Jian Wang, Bertrand Chamayou and Augustin Dumay.
A graduate of the CNSMD in Paris, where he studied under Hortense Cartier-Bresson and Florent Boffard, he is currently artist-in-residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, under the direction of Frank Braley and Avedis Kouyoumdjian. A laureate of the Banque Populaire and Safran Foundations, he has won several international awards, including first prizes at the Gabriel Fauré and Società Umanitaria competitions in Milan, as well as prizes at the Ricardo Viñes Competition and the Japan Piano Open Competition.
DENIS LAVANT
Trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique, Denis Lavant is a distinctive and powerful figure in French cinema. A great stage actor, he has notably worked with Pierre Pradinas, Hans Peter Cloos, Bernard Sobel, Dan Jemmet, James Thierrée and Jacques Osinski, with whom he has been collaborating for several years on the works of Samuel Beckett … Having developed a taste for poetry at a very early age, he is also the voice of many poets who are both little-known and under-appreciated, whose works he regularly reads in public. In cinema, he has been the signature actor of director Leos Carax, from Boy Meets Girl in 1983 to Holy Motors, released in 2012 – a sensation at the 65th Cannes Film Festival – in which Denis Lavant plays eleven roles all by himself. He has also acted, amongst others, under the direction of Patrice Chéreau, Diane Kurys, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Claude Lelouch, Claire Denis, Harmony Korine, Arnaud des Pallières, Wolfgang Becker, Dominique Rocher, Emily Atef, Pierre Schoeller, Philippe Lacôte and Mathieu Gérault. More recently, he has worked with Swedish director John Skoog on his film Redoubt and with François Ozon on L’étranger.
Watch the Short-Film "L'Oiseau" on Vimeo
(2026) IMPRESSIONS - CD 3166
Lively and enthusiastic, Amia Janicki makes no secret of her admiration for George Enescu (1881–1955), an artist she describes as “well-rounded, humble, and so devoted to music in all its forms, from teaching to the violin and the piano”. The violinist – who has a particular love for 20th-century repertoire – recorded Enescu’s admirable Octet in 2023 for the Belgian label Fuga Libera. Three years later, she places the Romanian composer’s Impressions d’enfance (Childhood impressions), Op. 28, at the heart of her first solo album.
Of Austrian, Polish, and Japanese heritage, Amia Janicki is especially attuned to the interplay between modernity and tradition, and between folklore and so-called “classical” music. Yet her artistic commitment goes further. The young Swiss violinist, who studied in Geneva with Tedi Papavrami and in Vienna under Pavel Vernikov, is a laureate of numerous international competitions including the Jean Sibelius International Violin Competition, and a former artist-in-residence at the Chapelle Reine Elisabeth (in Augustin Dumay’s class). She dreams of a performing career not confined to the stage, but one that takes on a more creative dimension, connecting the concert hall experience to other artistic fields. Amia Janicki enjoys weaving connections between the arts, and her identity as a musician is also defined through collaborations, such as the one she developed in 2022–2023 with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui on his ballet Ukiyo-e.
It is through collaboration that she approaches the creation of George Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance. A highly virtuosic piece, it is also one of the composer’s few programmatic works, evoking highly visual atmospheres. The violinist sees it as an opportunity to introduce 20th-century music to non-specialist audiences. Rather than producing a mere visual illustration of the soundscapes, she initiated the creation of a short film with director Lily Landecy, featuring herself alongside pianist Kojiro Okada and narrator Denis Lavant, two long-standing collaborators. Through this short film, Amia Janicki hopes to shed new light on Enescu’s work, placing it within its historical context.
George Enescu’s musical talent was recognised very early on; he was just eight years old when he left his native Romania to study music, first in Vienna and then in Paris. His career unfolded between Paris and Bucharest, before his definitive exile during the communist era. His style evolved continuously. His early works resonate with the influence of Brahms and his teacher Gabriel Fauré, whilst also drawing inspiration from Romanian folklore. He rapidly integrated the quarter-tone into his musical language, and listeners are constantly struck by the heterophonic and rhythmic richness of his works. Moreover, this apparent simplicity conceals a profound complexity that defies analysis, prompting Harry Halbreich to write: “If an early work such as the brilliant Octet, completed at the age of nineteen, already equals Schoenberg in combinatorial and formal richness, what then of the mature works!”
When Enescu composed his Impressions d’enfance in 1940 – the same year as his celebrated Piano Quintet – he was approaching sixty. In a Europe at war, the composer had recently moved to Romania and turned to his childhood memories. His Impressions harbour a profound nostalgia, but also a certain bitterness, as Amia Janicki points out. Divided into ten linked movements with evocative titles, they form a vast poem that takes the listener on a journey from day to night. The violin soars forth alone in “Le Ménétrier” (The Country Fiddler) – the piano entering only in the second piece – in a long, improvised melody that explores the full range of the instrument’s timbres. After a nostalgic evocation of the “Vieux mendiant” (The Old Beggar) comes “L’Oiseau en cage” (The Bird in the Cage), in which the violin mimics the bird’s song, establishing an increasingly unsettling and menacing atmosphere. The “Chanson pour bercer” (Lullaby), with its folk-like, comforting, and haunting touch, sounds reminiscent of ancient lullabies from the depths of time. “La lune” (The Moon) glimpsed “à travers les vitres” (Through the Windowpanes) leads to the “Vent dans la cheminée” (Wind in the Chimney), and then to the “Tempête au dehors dans la nuit” (Storm Outside in the Night), evoking the nocturnal fears of childhood, before the “Lever de soleil” (Sunrise) unfolds, first poetic and light, then gradually revealing warmth, ardour, and the joy of life’s return.
Whilst George Enescu drew inspiration from his Romanian childhood and dedicated the work to his first violin teacher, Eduard Caudella, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) conceived his Divertimento during the same decade, equally as a tribute to a composer he deeply admired, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The work also resulted from a collaboration between the composer and the American violinist of Polish origin Samuel Dushkin, for whom Stravinsky transcribed in 1932 for violin and piano the original music from the ballet Le Baiser de la Fée (The Fairy’s Kiss), which was premiered at the Paris Opéra four years earlier. Commissioned by Ida Rubinstein and inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, this ballet led to the definitive rupture between the composer and Sergei Diaghilev. Described as “neo-classical” in style, the work draws on thematic material from several of Tchaikovsky’s early compositions. In the Divertimento, the composer reworks and condenses the work into a few movements: the Sinfonia recapitulates the action of the ballet’s first scene, in which the Snow Queen kisses a child. This is followed by the Danses suisses (Swiss Dances), which take on a folk character, and then by the three parts of the pas de deux: Adagio, Variation, and Coda. As André Boucourechliev writes in his biography of the composer, Stravinsky passed from “virtuoso juggling with Tchaikovsky’s material to a complete identification of himself with the spirit of his great predecessor, and a fascination which found expression in a great outburst of creative activity”.
Stravinsky chose an Andersen tale as the basis for The Fairy’s Kiss. Another story similarly inspired the creation, in 1971, of Ferdinand the Bull, a work by the English composer Alan Ridout (1934–1996). The picture book, written by the American author Munro Leaf, was published in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. Titled The Story of Ferdinand, it rapidly became a best-seller. It tells of a young bull who prefers looking at flowers to fighting others. A prolific composer with a largely tonal style, Alan Ridout chose the solo violin to illustrate – alongside the narrator – the atmosphere, emotions, and humour of this tale, which has retained all its freshness.
Each of the works selected for this debut album resonates as a nod to the world of childhood. And Harold Noben’s Yōkai is no exception. In 2020, Amia Janicki discovered Noben’s music whilst performing his chamber opera À l’extrême bord du monde (At the Very Edge of the World) at La Monnaie in Brussels, a work that evokes the tragic end of Stefan Zweig and his wife Lotte. Amia Janicki immediately decided to commission a violin piece from him to feature in this programme. Inspired by the world of childhood and folklore, and recalling her Japanese origins, she suggested to the composer that they explore the Yōkai, those fantastic creatures typical of Japanese folk tradition, sometimes described as monsters, sometimes as spirits, sometimes mischievous, sometimes malevolent, but most often playful in nature. Composed for violin, piano, and narrator, the work presents, after a prologue, the characters of several of these Yōkai, set to words and music by Harold Noben. The music thus re-enchants the world and, just as in Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance, weaves links between the human and supernatural realms, constituting, perhaps, one of the finest characteristics of modernity in music.
Bénédicte Gandois
Translation: Michelle Bulloch – Musitext
AMIA JANICKI
A committed young performer, Amia Janicki shares music on stage, but also promotes her own creative work. Passionate about interdisciplinary projects, the Swiss violinist co-created the short film L’Oiseau, produced by Le Hangar production and inspired by Georges Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance, Op. 28, which was released in 2023. This project arose from a collaboration blending the worlds of cinema and music. She also worked with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in 2022–2023 on his ballet Ukiyo-e.
A laureate of the Jean Sibelius International Violin Competition and winner of First Prize at the Václav Huml International Violin Competition, Amia was artist-in-residence at the Queen Elisabeth Chapel in Augustin Dumay’s class, and obtained a master’s degree in solo performance at the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne under Svetlana Makarova. She was trained in her youth by Tedi Papavrami in Geneva.
She performs at prestigious venues and festivals such as the Musikverein, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Bozar and the La Roque-d’Anthéron Festival, and plays with orchestras such as the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tonkünstler Orchestra, and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra.
In 2023, she also recorded Enescu’s Octet for Fuga Libera. Amia plays a 1645 violin by Niccolò Amati, on loan from the Maggini Foundation with the support of LS Core.
From the 2026 academic year, she will join the LUCA School of Arts as a violin teacher, and also the Zurich University of the Arts as an assistant to Andreas Janke.
KOJIRO OKADA
Born in Bordeaux in 1999, Kojiro Okada began learning the piano at the age of seven with Anne-Lise Gastaldi. From a very young age, he has performed at several prestigious venues, notably at the Salle Pleyel in 2010 for the bicentenary of Chopin, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 2013, at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2022, followed by the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and La Seine Musicale in 2024. He also performs regularly at the Salle Cortot and the Salle de Musique in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
His international engagements include two chamber music tours of North America: in 2022 with violist Miguel da Silva, and then in March 2025 with several renowned partners. He recently performed at the Seoul Arts Centre with violinist Augustin Dumay in a complete cycle of Brahms’ sonatas. A regular guest at numerous festivals, including the Nohant Chopin Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron, the Folles Journées de Nantes and the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, he is also a regular guest at Flagey in Brussels.
A passionate chamber musician, Kojiro was the pianist with the Trio Pantoum until 2025, with whom he recorded for La Dolce Volta. He now maintains a busy schedule as a soloist and chamber musician, notably performing in a duo with his brother, the violinist Shuichi Okada. He has collaborated with artists such as Nicholas Angelich, Jean- Efflam Bavouzet, Frank Braley, Miguel da Silva, Gary Hoffman, Jian Wang, Bertrand Chamayou and Augustin Dumay.
A graduate of the CNSMD in Paris, where he studied under Hortense Cartier-Bresson and Florent Boffard, he is currently artist-in-residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, under the direction of Frank Braley and Avedis Kouyoumdjian. A laureate of the Banque Populaire and Safran Foundations, he has won several international awards, including first prizes at the Gabriel Fauré and Società Umanitaria competitions in Milan, as well as prizes at the Ricardo Viñes Competition and the Japan Piano Open Competition.
DENIS LAVANT
Trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique, Denis Lavant is a distinctive and powerful figure in French cinema. A great stage actor, he has notably worked with Pierre Pradinas, Hans Peter Cloos, Bernard Sobel, Dan Jemmet, James Thierrée and Jacques Osinski, with whom he has been collaborating for several years on the works of Samuel Beckett … Having developed a taste for poetry at a very early age, he is also the voice of many poets who are both little-known and under-appreciated, whose works he regularly reads in public. In cinema, he has been the signature actor of director Leos Carax, from Boy Meets Girl in 1983 to Holy Motors, released in 2012 – a sensation at the 65th Cannes Film Festival – in which Denis Lavant plays eleven roles all by himself. He has also acted, amongst others, under the direction of Patrice Chéreau, Diane Kurys, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Claude Lelouch, Claire Denis, Harmony Korine, Arnaud des Pallières, Wolfgang Becker, Dominique Rocher, Emily Atef, Pierre Schoeller, Philippe Lacôte and Mathieu Gérault. More recently, he has worked with Swedish director John Skoog on his film Redoubt and with François Ozon on L’étranger.
Watch the Short-Film "L'Oiseau" on Vimeo
Return to the album | Read the booklet | Composer(s): Various Composers | Main Artist: Amia Janicki