Godard: Piano Works, Vol. 1 Eliane Reyes

• 1I. Allegro con moto ma non troppo10:01
• 2II. Quasi adagio, molto tranquillo08:15
• 3III. Scherzo-Final: Allegro non troppo07:16
• 4I. Les Genies de la Foret: Allegro vivace10:16
• 5II. Les Farfadets: Scherzo, vivace ma non troppo03:26
• 6III. La Fee d'Amour: Quasi adagio06:25
• 7IV. Les Esprits de la Mer: Allegro vivace04:42
• 8Promenade en Mer, Op. 8603:28
• 9Sur la Mer, Op. 4404:13
• 10Au Matin, Op. 8305:30
• 11Conte de Fee, Op. 6206:08
• Total Runtime01:09:40

Info for Godard: Piano Works, Vol. 1

Benjamin Godard was regarded as one of the most promising French composers of the second half of the nineteenth century but, as he stood firm against the ‘Wagner fever’ of his contemporaries, his music fell out of favour after his untimely death. Most of his piano works are delightful character pieces or miniatures but his two powerful piano sonatas make him one of the very few French composers to have experimented with this form.

Eliane Reyes, piano

Eliane Reyes
is a radiant personality on today’s music scene. She has an astonishingly rich career as a result of her early vocation, having given her first concert when she was just five years old. Eliane Reyes was born in Verviers, Belgium in 1977. She started playing the piano with her mother and, aged five, received the « César Franck » presented to her by the Austrian pianist Jörg Demus.

She has conducted her studies with grand masters who encouraged her early on. Aged ten, she met Gyorgy Cziffra and became one of his foundation’s youngest laureates. Other decisive encounters were to follow: with Martha Argerich, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Michel Béroff, Brigitte Engerer, Hans Leygraf, Jacques Rouvier, Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden and Alan Weiss.

She attended the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Brussels, the Queen Elizabeth Music Chapel, the Berlin University of the Arts (Hochschule der Künste) and the Mozarteum de Salzburg, receiving each time highest acclaim for her talent. Eliane also had the privilege to participate in the master classes of Paul Badura-Skoda, Abdel-Rahman El-Bacha, Murray Perahia, Gyorgy Sebök, Natalia Gutman and Mstislav Rostropovitch.

She has won a range of international competitions such as the 1st prize in Ettlingen, Germany as well as at the Cervantes competition in Cuba. She has also been a finalist at the International Musical Competitions of Montreal and Düsseldorf (Clara Schumann), and the Maria Canals for chamber music, to mention but a few examples.

Since her debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and, aged 11, with the Tibor Varga Festival, she has dedicated herself to her career as a soloist and chamber musician. Eliane has performed in North America and in the Far East in addition to Europe where she has appeared in a broad range of music events including the Klavier Ruhr Festival, the Schwetzinger Festspiele, the Festival van Vlaanderen and the Festival de Wallonie,the Flâneries Musicales de Reims, Nohant’s International Chopin Festival, the David Oistrackh Festival in Estonia, the Al Bustan Festival in Lebanon.

She has also given concerts in prestigious concert halls such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Konzerthaus Berlin, Liederhalle in Stuttgart, Baden-Baden’s Festspielhaus, Hamburg’s Musikhalle, the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts (Palais des Beaux-Arts) in Brussels and the Cité de la musique in Paris, working with renowned conductors such as Rudolph Barshai, Heribert Beissel, Lionel Bringuier, Sergiu Commissionna, René Defossez, Grant LLewellyn, André Vandernoot, and Tibor and Gilbert Varga.

Eliane’s chamber music partners include Philippe Bernold, Henri Demarquette, Lorenzo Gatto, Elsa Grether, Florent Héau, Philippe Koch, Jérôme Laran, Frédéric Pélassy, Céline Scheen, and Ronald van Spaendonck. She has often performed with the Danel, Elysée et Parkanyi quartets as well as with Marc Coppey, Augustin Dumay, Misha Maisky, François-Joël Thiollier and José Van Dam. With violinist Leonid Kerbel and cellist Aleksandr Khramouchin she forms the Trio Sonnetto, guided and supported by the eminent pianist Paul Badura-Skoda.

In 2010, Eliane Reyes was awarded the “Octave de la Musique” prize for her career from a jury composed of around one hundred Belgian press and media representatives as well as personalities from the music scene.

Following her recital tour in Kiev, Saint-Petersbourg and Moscow, Eliane Reyes is partnering with the violonist Lorenzo Gatto throughout the 2010/2011 season as part of their “Rising Star” tour leading them to many European capitals.

Her most recent engagements include performances with the Parkanyi quartet at the Val-Dieu festival as well as the world-premiere of Nicolas Bacri’s “Esquisse d’Automne”, in the composer’s presence, at the 20th anniversary of the Auvers-sur-Oise Festival, representing a homage to Henri Dutilleux.

Laureate of the foundations Belge de la Vocation, Rheinold Bluthner and Sir Georg Solti, Eliane Reyes is currently also professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse in Paris. Eliane’s discography consists of recordings of contemporary composers including Nicolas Bacri, Michel Lysight, Darius Milhaud, Jean-Marie Simonis and most recently, a CD dedicated to Alexandre Tansman, for Naxos, Dux, Kalidisc et Fuga Libera labels. These recordings – both recitals and chamber music – have received a number of awards: 4 stars from «Classica », 5 diapasons on two occasions from “Diapason Magazine” as well as the Recomendado award from the Spanish music magazine “CD Compact”. A new recording dedicated to Nicolas Bacri’s solo piano works will be released in the fall 2011.

This album contains no booklet.