Description

The Montreal Chamber Players, all members of the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal who are also avid chamber-music players join Jennifer Swartz, principal harp with the OSM and a prolific soloist, for this recording of French works from the post-Romantic and Impressionistic periods.

They play works written by Ravel in his youth, and by Debussy at the peak of his career. They also play masterpieces by three less known but equally indispensable composers: an ode to the sea beside which he grew up by Ropartz, strongly influenced by the Breton folk tradition; one of the very last works that Koechlin completed, amply demonstrating his unerring instinct as an orchestrator; and Roussel’s Sérénade, a musical snapshot of Paris in the Roaring Twenties, full of vivid impressions and effervescent poetry.