Échos Du Temps, Voyage À Travers La Musique Française Du 20e Siècle Pour Flûte – Désirée Del Santo

Late 19th and first half of the 20th century French music production is characterized by a taste for sophisticated melodies, refined and unusual timbral mixtures. The influence of composers such as Debussy and Ravel is deep and widespread, but the more avant-garde experimentation, as to be found in the rarefied atmospheres and rhythmic fluidity of musique d’ameublement, is also an undeniable element in the fin de siècle French soundscape. In this context, the flute and harp duo plays a significant and prominent role. The timbral blend, already popular among post-Mozartian German composers at the turn of the 19th century, owes its best literature precisely to the late 19th-century French composers, who captured its potential. This Da Vinci Classics album features the important Sonate by Jean Michel Damase, a pupil of Alfred Cortot and Marcel Dupré; the Pavan à cinq temps by the same composer, written in 1996; the Divertissement Grec by Jules Mouquet, a former pupil of Théodore Dubois; and the Suite en duo by Jean Cras, a polymath who lived between nineteenth and twentieth century.