Bertrand Chamayou - Wanderer - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This is a survey of Ravel's solo piano music, a bold statement from the French rising star of the piano. It includes not only the oft-performed works such as Le tombeau de Couperin, and the Pavane pour une infante defunte but also lesser-known gems such as the pieces written in the styles of Borodin and Chabrier respectively, and the early Serenade grotesque. The album is a tour de force and promises to be a major landmark in his discography. Bertrand Chamayou, hometown Paris, was born in Toulouse in 1981. Despite his youth, Chamayou is firmly established as a highly-respected artist and is much in demand. He is the only artist to win France's prestigious Victories de la Musique on three occasions. At 20, he was a prize-winner at the international Long-Thibuad Competition, returning there in 2012 as a member of the jury. He has serious approach and has achieved success with his solo albums as well as his recent recital album with cellist Sol Gabetaa.

A giant fresco, a kind of odyssey, is Bertrand Chamayou's description of Olivier Messiaen's piano masterwork, Vingt Regards sur L'Enfant-Jésus. Written in 1944, it is a monumental, mystical and iridescent sequence of 20 gazes or contemplations on the infant Jesus. Messiaen once wrote that InchThe drama of my life is that I have written religious music for an audience that has no faith.Inch Bertrand Chamayou feels that the Vingt Regards Inchis a mystical rather than a religious experience... It arouses the same kind of awe as walking into a magnificent cathedral or seeing a glorious sunset. You feel that time stops.Inch Chamayou first played the work in 2008, Messiaen's centenary year, but it has been part of his life since he was nine years old. InchIt was revelation... I think I can say that the Vingt Regards has played a role in shaping the way I play, the sound I produce and my approach as an interpreter.Inch To complement this two-hour landmark of the repertoire, Chamayou has also recorded five short musical tributes to Messiaen, written in the years following his death in 1992. They are by Toru Takemitsu, Tristan Murail, György Kurtág, Jonathan Harvey and Anthony Cheung.

In Bertrand Chamayou's words, Ravel Fragments is Incha personal contribution to the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of a composer who has been with me constantly since I was a childInch. An album of solo piano music, it ranges from Ravel's own transcriptions of La Valse and extracts from Daphnis et Chloé - both, of course, spectacular orchestral works - to Chamayou's own transcriptions of vocal works by the composer, and to pieces that pay tribute to Ravel. Five of these are by composers of the past - Arthur Honegger, Joaquín Nin, Alexandre Tansman, Xavier Montsalvatge and Ricardo Viñes (the pianist who championed the music of Ravel, Debussy and other major figures in the early 20th century), and three by composers of our own time - Betsy Jolas, Salvatore Sciarrino and Frédéric Durieux.