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Both the works on this recording were written during wartime. Debussy’s 1915 En blanc et noir, composed during a late creative burst, is his musical response to the horrors of World War I. Messiaen’s revolutionary Visions de l’Amen from 1943, written to be performed by the composer and his teenage pupil, Yvonne Loriod, is a profound religious meditation whose emotional intensity is overwhelming. The role of the two pianos is clearly divided. Melodic and expressive elements are confined to the second piano, Messiaen’s part, whereas all that is percussion, brilliance and rhythmic development is heard in the first piano, Loriod’s part.

Dutch pianist and musicologist Ralph van Raat has won, among other awards, Second Prize and Donemus-Prize (for Contemporary Music) of the Princess Christina Competition (1995); Stipend-Prize Darmstadt during the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt (1998); and First Prize of the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition (1999). Of Norwegian origin, Håkon Austbø was the first non-French artist to win the Concours National de la Guilde Française des Artistes Solistes in Paris (1970), and in 1971 he gained international attention when a unanimous jury awarded him the first prize of the Olivier Messiaen Competition for Contemporary Music in Royan, France.

Krzysztof Meyer’s intensely dramatic and eloquent string quartets stand at the centre of his achievements as a composer. The extremes of mood which characterize the Ninth Quartet contrast with the Eleventh Quartet, whose form recalls the single movement quartets of Shostakovich. The Twelfth Quartet is a richly expressive and forceful summation of the composer’s contribution to this genre. The Wieniawski Quartet’s recording of Meyer’s Quartets Nos. 5, 6 and 8 (8570776) was welcomed as an ‘exciting issue of very stimulating music’. (MusicWeb International)

Krzysztof Meyer’s widely performed and multi award-winning music embraces impressive emotional depth and immense technical variety. While the Seventh Quartet explores the contrasts between solo and ensemble writing in a single movement, the extended Tenth Quartet can be seen as a synthesis of Meyer’s experience with the genre. The Thirteenth Quartet is his most recent to date. The Wieniawski String Quartet’s recordings of Meyer have been acclaimed as “exemplary in all respects” (The Whole Note on Vols. 1 & 2: 8570776 and 8572656).

Meyerbeer created his operas as vast, elaborate woven tapestries – showered with detail and colour – the result of years of painstaking work.

This landmark recording of The Crusader in Egypt was made in January 2007 during a performance starring American male soprano Michael Maniaci and a cast of renowned Italian singers at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice, where this spectacular grand opera was premièred in 1824.

One of 19th century opera’s long-forgotten major masterpieces, Il crociato was composed at the close of Meyerbeer’s Italian phase shortly before he embarked upon his triumphant career in Paris.

Best known for his spectacular operas (including Il Crociato in Egitto and Semiramide recorded respectively on Naxos 8660245-47 and 8660205-06) Giacomo Meyerbeer also contributed to the more intimate world of French, German and Italian song . Often reflecting on the joys and pains of love or glowing with religious fervour, the 26 songs heard here are interpreted by Sivan Rotem, one of Israel’s outstanding singers, and Jonathan Zak, a graduate of The Juilliard School and professor at the Buchman-Mehta Music School of Tel-Aviv University.

By and large Gigli kept faith with those pieces he most enjoyed singing and that his public adored. ‘It was only through my audiences that this exercise of lungs, diaphragm and vocal cords became transmuted for me into a profound spiritual experience. Like a squirrel counting his hoard of nuts in the winter, I treasure their applause in my memory.’

“No doubt remained as soon as the piano began to reverberate: on the stage was a first class musician and a maestro.” SOVIETSKAIA KULTURA Moscow 1960

“For some years now Idil Biret has been a widely-respected figure for music-lovers, witness her exemplary interpretations of Scriabin, Bartók and Prokofiev. The masterly way in which she marshals her approach to, above all, works of our century has led to a stylistic unity of written score and interpretation which, far beyond the conventional adulation lavished on stars, has concentrated attention on Idil Biret as an artistic force of outstanding merit.” DIE WELT Germany 1979

“The campus of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, 50 miles north of Philadelphia, was where you needed to be on Sunday November 14, if you are a lover of transcendental piano-playing. Idil Biret, the great Turkish pianist, gave a recital devoted entirely to 20th Century works and demonstrated in this perhaps surprising context the true meaning of the word “virtuosity”: not flashy superficiality, but simply a technical command so complete that the performer can, as it were, take the solution of problems for granted and concentrate entirely on musical issues… If 20th-century music were always performed like this, it would surely not suffer from the hearer-unfriendly reputation that still too often bedevils it.” MUSICWEB USA 2004