The application of historical performance ideas to late Romantic music proceeds apace, and what could be more appropriate for the trend than the music in the circles surrounding Marcel Proust, whose writing is so full of musical references? Cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih issued a collection on the BIS label of cello music connected with Proust's salons, and now violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and pianist Tanguy de Williencourt offer this even more specific examination, grandly titled Proust, le ...
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The application of historical performance ideas to late Romantic music proceeds apace, and what could be more appropriate for the trend than the music in the circles surrounding Marcel Proust, whose writing is so full of musical references? Cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih issued a collection on the BIS label of cello music connected with Proust's salons, and now violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and pianist Tanguy de Williencourt offer this even more specific examination, grandly titled Proust, le concert retrouvé (in English "A Concert at the Time of Proust" is used). As critic Nick Hammond points out ( Paris Update , March 24, 2021), the musicians' names themselves "would not look out of place on the guest list of one of the salons described by Proust in his lengthy novel" ( The Remembrance of Things Past ), and this release represents a fine act of historical imagination. The key is the instruments used: the 1708 "Davidoff" Stradivarius for de Swarte and an 1891 Erard...
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