The music by Pierre Sancan on this album is all but unknown, even in France, and it may seem quite a surprise, even with the star power of the popular pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, that it turned up on classical best-seller lists in the spring of 2023. The only possible explanation is that the music is a total delight. Sancan was a teacher of Bavouzet, among others, as well as a pianist; even the booklet here offers the disclaimer that he was born too late and wrote neoclassic music in the middle of the 20th century. It would be nice if the discourse could get away from this idea, the notion of inevitable progress being quaintly Victorian by now. In any event, the music is lively and light in spirit. Those who enjoy the similarly underrated Jean Françaix will love Sancan, but the most remarkable feature is that Sancan wrote truly virtuosic music. It is very French, not keyboard-banging virtuoso music in the Russian sense, but its technical demands are considerable. There is a fine piano concerto and some short piano pieces (hear the two-minute Boîte à musique), but the real highlight is the three-movement Sonatine for flute and piano, where the two instruments interlock in difficult skittering figures. Bavouzet surely knows this music better than anyone else, and his performance here with flutist Adam Walker is wholly compelling. This is a unique document, a wonderful window into a French tradition too often dismissed as academic.© James Manheim /TiVo

Praised for his meticulous fidelity to the composer's intentions, as well as for his rich tonal palette and the warmth of his expressions, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has won many admirers for his five albums of the complete solo piano music of Claude Debussy. These recordings were produced by Chandos between 2007 and 2009, and they have now been gathered into a handsome box set; each disc is presented with its own cardboard sleeve and the original liner notes that accompanied each release. The roster of artists who have recorded Debussy's keyboard music is a long and distinguished one, though Bavouzet is easily ranked in the upper echelons, equal in stature among such luminaries as Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Krystian Zimerman, Maurizio Pollini, Angela Hewitt, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and Pascal Rogé. Experienced listeners will already have favorite recordings of the Préludes, Images, Estampes, and Études, as well as the perennially popular Suite bergamasque, Children's Corner, and other picturesque pieces. However, many will be won over by the consistency of Bavouzet's playing, and newcomers will find that his disciplined yet gorgeous readings are a great way to begin appreciating these charming classics. Chandos provides excellent sound that gives the piano a clear presence yet takes nothing away from Bavouzet's atmospheric colors or the radiant acoustics. Highly recommended.© TiVo

The first volume of Cécile Chaminade’s piano music on Piano Classics won the same kind of universal accolades as the rest of Mark Viner’s fast-growing catalogue of albums for the label. His masterful advocacy is helping her to regain the reputation she enjoyed during her lifetime, when she could count Queen Victoria among her legion of ardent fans, in a long and fruitful career capped by becoming the first female composer to be awarded the "Legion d’honneur", in 1913 – when she still had more than 30 years of productive music-making ahead of her. The reason for Chaminade’s popularity is the charm, tunefulness and general accessibility of her music. It touches a ready chord with every music lover, and the fancy titles and not overly virtuosic piano writing made that her works became drawing room favorites of the epoch. Chaminade is principally remembered today as a composer of salon music, but she began her career writing on a much grander scale and with loftier expressive ambitions, both for the piano and in other genres. Such ambitions leave a mark on the set of six Etudes de concert which Mark Viner has compiled from different opus numbers (distinct from the Op. 35 set recorded on Volume 1), beginning in dazzling style with the flashing runs of the Etude romantique, Op. 132 and ending with the no-nonsense counterpoint of the Etude scolastique, Op. 139. Au pays dévasté, Op. 155 is one of Chaminade’s most profound conceptions, among the most serious of her late works, published in 1919 in the wake of the First World War, which she had spent as a nurse to wounded soldiers away from the front line. However, there is also plenty of Chaminade the charmer here, at the peak of her powers in the Six Pièces humoristiques – the first and last of which receive their world premiere recordings here. The album opens with Ondine, among her most supple and delicately textured tone-poems, and closes with the irrepressibly cheeky Lolita, a "caprice espagnol" worthy of Carmen herself. Further highlights in between include a swaying and sensuous Danse créole, Op. 94 and the offbeat, coquettish Guitare, Op. 34. Under Mark Viner’s fingers, Chaminade casts the same spell here as she did over audiences across Europe 150 years ago. © Piano Classics

The popularity of Paolo Tosti's songs in the early 20th century, even in the U.S., is indicated by a satirical tune, I Want to Know Where Tosti Went (When He Sang Goodbye Forever) from the Black minstrel performer Bert Williams. In Britain, he was at the top of the charts, being paid handsomely by a publisher for 12 songs a year. That wasn't a problem; he ended up writing some 400 songs, of which this release by tenor Javier Camarena barely scratches the surface. Today, Tosti is either forgotten or grouped with the Neapolitan song composers. He could write Neapolitan songs (a good example here is Marechiare), but that was just one facet of his output. Camarena seeks to explore the variety of Tosti's work rather than simply delivering greatest hits, and in fact, Goodbye Forever is not included, but there is a fairly ambitious song cycle, Quattro canzoni d'Amaranta, about which one might be hard pressed to guess the composer if one didn't already know. There are also songs in English dating from Tosti's British sojourn and a set of French Mélodies. Camarena overcompensates with rhoticism in some of the English (Tosti's songs were British, not American), but in the main body of Italian pieces, he sounds great, applying but not overdoing a dose of sentiment. The biggest thing most listeners will take away from this album is that Tosti is an underrated composer; the songs here are light, but they are never formulaic, and the program is thoroughly enjoyable. Camarena gets solid support from accompanist Ángel Rodriguez and from the PentaTone label's engineers, working in a San Francisco Conservatory of Music recital hall.© James Manheim /TiVo

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The Naxos label has embarked on a series covering lesser-known works of Sibelius, performed by the little-known (outside Finland) but venerable Turku Philharmonic Orchestra under Sibelius veteran Leif Segerstam. They're well worth the time of Sibelius lovers, with clean, idiomatic performances that cover a side of the composer substantially lighter than that shown by his weighty symphonies. Many are associated with the theater, falling into genres like incidental music that really ought not to be forgotten inasmuch as they were the direct ancestors of today's soundtrack music. The music here is known to at least some listeners: Sibelius' incidental music for Maeterlinck's play Pelléas et Mélisande is performed often in a suite made by the composer, but recordings of the whole set of pieces are rare. The work makes an interesting counterpoint to Debussy's and Schoenberg's better-known sets of pieces, and if the listener can shake free of a linear view of music history, it stands up well to those. Sample the very sparse and powerful Mélisande's song (track 6), given a rich performance by soprano Pia Pajala; it's enough to make one wish Sibelius had been induced to apply his structural thinking to opera. The deep and unified final Andante from Act V could and should be performed more often as an independent work. After the Pélleas music is another piece of incidental music for an abortive project, a trio of waltzes (one vocal), and a little work from the end of Sibelius' career. There might be slightly cleaner versions of the Pélleas et Mélisande music out there, but probably not in a recording that gives the entire work. © TiVo