Ravel was not only a master craftsman of exquisitely constructed chamber works but he was also a key innovator inspired by the tonal/atonal experiments of Schoenberg Stravinsky and the Second Viennese School. This is most closely reflected in the remarkable Mallarmé Poems Ravel's closest approach to the modernist innovations. Elsewhere his Piano Trio presents a perfect example of the delicacy and intricacy of Ravel's chamber music. Joined by several other full chamber pieces this is music that presents Ravel at his most musically ambitious brought together for the first time in one large-format attractively-priced volume.

Score and Parts.Commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Centre. First performance 19 May 1998 Merkin Concert Hall New York City.Quoting Weir: 'In my previous work I have often enjoyed inventing titles whichattempt to encapsulate the particular world of each composition but this fifteen minutes piece for violin cello and piano is simply entitled Piano Trio . What is the reason for this unusually abstract description? I thinkperhaps that in this piece the many external impressions which habitually make up my musical world have become too numerous and too personal to be pinned down in the space of few words that a composition title allows.The firstmovement began in my mind with impressions of Venice as relayed in Schubert's song Gondelfahrer; the crisp midnight air the dark choppy water the bells tolling the gondolier alone in emotional turmoil. Schubert's world is aplace where I can find constant inspiration and strength.The second movement recalls a time when I was called from a phone box in Africa. At one moment I was alone in my room the next (or so it seemed in my imagination)surrounded by light heat and sudden energy and activity. The movement is not however an evocation of African music; it takes the form of a scherzo and trio which collide with each other at the movement's conclusion.Thethird movement formed in my mind whilst I was reading some Gaelic poetry from the Hebridean island of Lewis on Scotland 's far flung Atlantic fringe. I was thinking of the bleached white beaches in that part of the world whereevery object lying on the sand - a washed-up bottle or a bird's skeleton - is a major event in a deserted landscape. The same might be said of this short set of musical variations where melodic fragments are laid out with plentyof space around them clear and plain for everyone to hear.

Short Version-For Violin Cello and Piano. Composer's Notes 'Even though this work was intended to celebrate (as instructed by the commissioner Brolly Arts of Salt LakeCity) the wildlife and landscape of Utah (and especially its birdlife notably the sora which has a noticeable influence on the melodic writing at times) the title refers ironically in this 'natural' context to the re-seeing’of (mainly industrial) reality in early Soviet photography. Aleksandr Rodchenko (1881-1956) drew attention to the new type of photographer as someone who photographs 'facts' and who is able through photography to fight against'looking like art' with high quality examples and to do this you have to experiment going as far as the ‘easelisation’ of the photographic art.The work was written for and first performed by the Ahn Trio in November2004 in Salt Lake City and is dedicated to the memory of John Peel the British radio disc jockey who died during the final stages of its composition.' - Michael Nyman

For more than forty years Allain Gaussin fascinated by astrophysics has found a major source of inspiration in observing the cosmos as attest a number of works going from Vent solaire (1974) to Philae (2015) by way of L’Harmonie des sphères (2006). Ten years later the 'Messiaen du Pays de la Meije' Festival hosted the first performance of the piano trio Les Céphéides. The musical journey enables the listener to enter a space 'just as impalpable and fragile' as that in which moves each Cepheid variable – this star whose brightness varies over regular periods according to two elements: the diameter of the heavenly body and thetemperature reading of its surface. How does one translate such a change in music? The bow's sautillé gettato on the violin and cello gives the score's opening pages this granular glittering that leads us 'towards the centre of the Cepheid variables'. From there a stream of colourful arabesques – the composer's 'ribbon figures' – gushes forth. After a weightless transition the cello unfurls its contemplative meditation which ends up in a suspended coda open onto the infinity of the starry vault. As musicologist Michèle Tosi accurately says so it is that the full richness 'of a teeming imaginary universe' unfolds.