Emmanuel Pahud - French Revolution Concerti - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Warner Classics' final for Beethoven's 250th anniversary year is a charming programme of chamber music with flute. The four works, all dating from the earlier years of the composer's career, were recorded in June 2020 in Berlin's Pierre Boulez Saal by a distinguished group of musicians led by Daniel Barenboim, here in his role as pianist, and flautist Emmanuel Pahud. Joining them are two of Pahud's colleagues from the Berliner Philharmoniker, the orchestra's First Concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto and it's Principal Viola, Amihai Grosz, and two players with links to the Wiener Philharmoniker, it's Principal Bassoon Sophie Dervaux, and Silvia Careddu, formerly it's Principal Flute.

With Airlines, flautist Emmanuel Pahud transports the music of composer Alexandre Desplat to new horizons. The album includes unreleased recordings including revisited versions of music from Desplat's films, including the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water (2018) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Pahud is accompanied by the National Orchestra of France, conducted by Alexandre Desplat himself.

Flautist Emmanuel Pahud and pianist Eric Lesage play arrangements of short pieces and songs by four German composers of the mid-19th century Robert Schumann and his wife Clara (born Clara Wieck), and Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny.Major composers of the earlier Romantic period somewhat neglected the flute as a solo instrument, even though there were a number of virtuoso players and the flute was popular with amateurs. The fact is that the instrument presented technical difficulties in terms of consistency of timbre and intonation; these were not satisfactorily resolved until 1847, when Theobald Boehm, a German manufacturer of wind instruments, produced the revolutionary prototype of the modern flute. The album comprises Robert Schumann's three Romances op 94 - originally written for oboe and transcribed for flute in the 1950s by Jean-Pierre Rampal - and his three Fantasiestücke op 73, originally conceived for clarinet; Clara Schumann's three Romances op 22, which she dedicated to the great violinist Joseph Joachim; arrangements of six lieder by Fanny Mendelssohn, and the sonata in F that Felix Mendelssohn composed as a violin work in 1838.