PIANO TRIOS, PIANO QUARTET

Léon Boëllmann died young, and of his 160 works only the magnificent Suite Gothique for organ was able to establish itself in the concert world. As a result, priceless treasures await rediscovery in his oeuvre. Reinforced by Gérard Caussé on the viola, the Trio Parnassus presents three chamber works by this French late romantic composer who has no reason to seek the shade in the shining light of the creations of his friends Saint-Saëns and Fauré.

"Leon Boellmann is known chiefly as an organ composer, but he also wrote piano and orchestral works and contributed to the revival of French chamber music during the course of his short life: he was born in 1862 and died in 1897. These two pieces are quite original and well-crafted. The quartet opens over rather strange, murky textures with a striding piano theme which it develops effectively...the manner here suggests Franck. Almost as inevitably, it is the spirit of Saint-Saens that hovers, not to the music's disadvantage, over the scherzo...The Trio is more advanced in every way, not least in the enterprising formal design as well as in the more advanced chromatic harmony. Boellmann was a fine musician, and this is not organists' music in any pejorative sense: rather, he used great mastery of the materials of music to explore a modest but distinctive lyrical manner."

-- J.W., Gramophone [11/1993]