LE VIOLONCELLE À L’ÉCOLE DE PARIS

Tibor Harsányi (1898–1954)
1 Rhapsodie (1924)*

Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986)
2–3 Deux Pièces (1931)

Bohuslav Martinu (1890–1959)
4 Variations sur un thème slovaque (H378)

Tibor Harsányi
5–7 Sonate Pour Violoncelle et Piano (1928)*

Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977)
8–11 Songs and Dances, Op. 84

Marcel Mihalovici (1898–1985)
12 Sonate dans le caractère d’une scène lyrique, op. 108 (1953)*

* World Premiere Recording

Wen-Sinn Yang, cello
Oliver Triendl, piano

After the devastation of World War I, young, hopeful, gifted composers trooped into the French capital. In 1925, the publisher Michel Dillard coined the term École de Paris (‘Paris School’) for the foreign composers then living there, especially Hungary’s Tibor Harsányi (1898–1954), Poland’s Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986), Czechoslovakia’s Bohuslav Martinu (1890–1959), Russia’s Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977), and Romania’s Marcel Mihalovici (1898– 1985), whose works he specialised in disseminating.
All five composers featured in this album came to Paris from Eastern Europe and all, with the exception of Martinu, died there. They initially attempted to translate the essence of folk music from their homelands, using standard musical notation to express idiomatic subtleties that were difficult to capture.
The programme includes the world premiere recordings of Harsányi’s Rhapsodie and Sonate Pour Violoncelle et Piano, and Mihalovici’s Sonate dans le caractère d’une scène lyrique.