A revival of the works of Gabriel Pierné has been spearheaded by a handful of dedicated labels that champion unjustly neglected classics, and Chandos has joined them with this fine recording by Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic of the Piano Concerto in C minor, the two suites of incidental music from Ramuntcho , and two shorter pieces. Pierné's career extended from the late Romantic era to the early modern, a period spanning roughly 50 years between the belle epoque in France and World War II, so there is a fairly ...
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A revival of the works of Gabriel Pierné has been spearheaded by a handful of dedicated labels that champion unjustly neglected classics, and Chandos has joined them with this fine recording by Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic of the Piano Concerto in C minor, the two suites of incidental music from Ramuntcho , and two shorter pieces. Pierné's career extended from the late Romantic era to the early modern, a period spanning roughly 50 years between the belle epoque in France and World War II, so there is a fairly wide range of influences. His early works share features with those of his teachers, César Franck and Jules Massenet, and his later style leans more to his contemporaries, Gabriel Fauré and Claude Debussy; overall, however, his oeuvre is perhaps closest to the music of Camille Saint-Saëns. Whether in the grand form of his Piano Concerto (which was modeled on Saint-Saëns' Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor), the neo-Classical wit of the Divertissements sur un thème pastoral, or in...
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