Roussel: Aria No. 2 for oboe & piano

The majority of the compositions on this disc are French possibly because the combination of oboe and piano is not one of the most common chamber music constellations, but in France it has a long established tradition. In a recent interview Bengt Rosengren recalled a sad time during the recording of this disc, “…many years of collaboration with the Pianist Kerstin Nylander, who plays about two thirds of the works on the recording. Following her tragic death in the spring of 07, I invited Matti Hirvonen to take her place as my conversation partner.”

The stylistic range on this programme is enormous between for example Colomer’s turn of the century ‘Grand Opera’ style and Shinohara’s modernistic purity.