Ravel. Piano & Chamber Music Julien Libeer, Lorenzo Gatto, Bruno Philippe

• 1 Ravel: Vocalise-étude en forme de habanera, M. 51 (Arr. for Cello and Piano by P. Bazelaire) 02:59
• 2 Ravel: Jeux d'eau, M. 30 05:57
• 3 Ravel: Sonatine, M. 40: I. Modéré, doux et expressif 04:27
• 4 Ravel: Sonatine, M. 40: II. Mouvement de Menuet 03:45
• 5 Ravel: Sonatine, M. 40: III. Animé 04:01
• 6 Ravel: Miroirs, M. 43: I. Noctuelles. Très léger 05:17
• 7 Ravel: Miroirs, M. 43: II. Oiseaux tristes. Très lent 04:01
• 8 Ravel: Miroirs, M. 43: III. Une barque sur l'océan. D'un rythme souple 07:36
• 9 Ravel: Miroirs, M. 43: IV. Alborada del gracioso. Assez vif 06:45
• 10 Ravel: Miroirs, M. 43: V. La vallée des cloches. Très lent 05:26
• 11 Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55: I. Ondine. Lent 06:31
• 12 Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55: II. Le gibet. Très lent 06:23
• 13 Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit, M. 55: III. Scarbo. Modéré 09:17
• 14 Ravel: Sonate pour violon et violoncelle, M. 73: I. Allegro 05:14
• 15 Ravel: Sonate pour violon et violoncelle, M. 73: II. Très vif 03:40
• 16 Ravel: Sonate pour violon et violoncelle, M. 73: III. Lent 05:30
• 17 Ravel: Sonate pour violon et violoncelle, M. 73: IV. Vif, avec entrain 05:54
• 18 Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61: I. Modéré, très franc 01:24
• 19 Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61: II. Assez lent, avec une expression intense 02:34
• 20 Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61: III. Modéré 01:35
• 21 Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61: IV. Assez animé 01:12
• 22 Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61: V. Presque lent, dans un sentiment intime 01:33
• 23 Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61: VI. Vif 00:44
• 24 Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61: VII. Moins vif 03:01
• 25 Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61: VIII. Epilogue. Lent 04:16
• 26 Ravel: Sonate pour violon et piano No. 2, M. 77: I. Allegretto 08:01
• 27 Ravel: Sonate pour violon et piano No. 2, M. 77: II. Blues. Moderato 05:32
• 28 Ravel: Sonate pour violon et piano No. 2, M. 77: III. Perpetuum mobile. Allegro 04:04
• 29 Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, M. 68: I. Prélude. Vif 03:08
• 30 Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, M. 68: II. Fugue. Allegro moderato 03:16
• 31 Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, M. 68: III. Forlane. Allegretto 06:50
• 32 Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, M. 68: IV. Rigaudon. Assez vif 03:35
• 33 Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, M. 68: V. Menuet. Allegro moderato 06:02
• 34 Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, M. 68: VI. Toccata. Vif 04:03
• Total Runtime 02:33:33

Info for Ravel. Piano & Chamber Music

This is not the first time he has recorded Ravel, but Julien Libeer has long wanted to trawl through Ravel's entire piano oeuvre, if not a little more. Everything or almost everything in it is essential and is like squaring the circle. "And yet we set to work, 'with everything we can bring him as an offering', as Dinu Lipatti said. The blue fire of his clear nature awakens and mobilizes. And incidentally comforts us about the imperfections of the world."

Julien Libeer, piano
Lorenzo Gatto, violin
Bruno Philippe, cello

Julien Libeer
was born in 1987 near Brussels. After five decisive years with French-Polish pianist and pedagogue Jean Fassina, he studies with Maria João Pires at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, whose advice and support strongly influenced Julien’s views over the last few years.

Julien has performed at the Palais des Beaux-Arts and Flagey (Brussels), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Barbican Hall (London), Auditorio Nacional (Madrid), Palau de la Música (Barcelona), Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg) and Concertgebouw (Amsterdam). In addition, other tours have taken him to Japan (Tokyo, Sumida Tryphony Hall), Lebanon (Beirut Chants festival), Turkey (Ankara Music Festival) and the US (Miami International Piano Festival).

He has performed with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Brussels Philharmonic, Belgian National Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia and New Japan Philharmonic; under conductors including Trevor Pinnock, Michel Tabachnik, Augustin Dumay, Hervé Niquet, Joshua Weilerstein, Enrique Mazzola, and Christopher Warren-Green.

An accomplished chamber musician, he works on a regular basis with Augustin Dumay, Camille Thomas, Frank Braley, Maria João Pires and Lorenzo Gatto, with whom he has performed the complete Beethoven violin sonatas (at venues including Wigmore Hall, Auditorium du Louvre and Royal Concertgebouw). Recent highlights include the release of Beethoven’s complete violin sonatas with Lorenzo Gatto (Alpha Classics), the first volume of which won the Diapason d’or de l'année 2016, plus his debut concerto album featuring Lipatti’s Concertino for piano and orchestra and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major, KV 595 with Les Métamorphoses Orchestra conducted by Raphaël Feye (Evil Penguin Records). In addition, he was the recipient of an Echo Klassik Award in 2017 for his album with cellist Camille Thomas.

Julien has received the Juventus award (most promising young European soloist) in 2008, and was elected Young Musician of the Year by the Belgian Music Press Association in 2010. The Klara award was attributed to him by the audience of the national radio for classical music twice, in 2013 and 2016.

Beyond concertizing, Julien is driven to initiate or collaborate in projects which are rooted in the idea that music, far beyond its aesthetic value, can be a force of change for anyone willing to listen. Amongst these projects was Julien hosting a Belgian TV series, that made a case for musical storytelling. He furthermore hosts the Salon Libeer concert series at the Bruges Concertgebouw, in which he joins a fellow musician and a speaker (e.g. philosopher, historian, author), as well as the ‘Glass Bead Game Talks’ on his own YouTube channel, a series of discussions exploring the recent evolutions in the classical music world and what to think of them.

Bruno Philippe
Born in 1993, Bruno Philippe studied the cello at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. From 2014-2018, he studied as a young soloist at the Kronberg Academy with Frans Helmerson and participated in masterclasses given by David Geringas, Steven Isserlis, Gary Hoffman, Pieter Wispelwey and Clemens Hagen at the Salzburg Mozarteum.

In 2018, Bruno Philippe was named ‘Instrumental Revelation’ at the Victoires de la Musique Classique. In 2014, he won the Nicolas Firmenich Prize at the Verbier Festival and then the Third Prize and the Audience Prize at the prestigious ARD International Competition in Munich. He also received “Special Prizes” at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in June 2015 and the Feuermann Competition in Berlin in November 2014. In 2015, Bruno was named “Classical Revelation of ADAMI” and in 2016, he won the Prix pour la Musique de la Fondation Safran for the cello. In 2017 he was a laureate of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Brussels, and in 2022 was invited back to the competition to present on live TV station “Musiq3.”

Bruno Philippe has appeared in prestigious venues and festivals in France (Festival de Pâques, Aix-en-Provence, Philharmonie de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, La Grange au Lac, Festival de Radio France Montpellier-Occitanie) and on the international scene, including the Berlin Konzerthaus, Alte Oper, Frankfurt, Teatro Colón, Bogotá and Bavarian Radio, Munich. Bruno has performed with many of Europe’s best orchestras including Radio-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, Dijon-Bourgogne Orchestra under Gabor Takács-Nagy, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin, Münchener Kammerorchester, Orchestre National de Bordeaux, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo.

Equally at ease on the chamber music platform, Bruno has performed alongside many prestigious artists including Gary Hoffman, Tabea Zimmermann, Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff, David Kadouch, Renaud Capuçon, Tanguy de Williencourt, Antoine Tamestit, Sarah Nemtanu, Lise Berthaud, Timothy Ridout, Stephen Waarts, Kian Soltani, Christophe Coin, Raphaël Pidoux and Cédric Tiberghien. An accomplished baroque cellist, Bruno has performed alongside Jean Rondeau, Thomas Dunford and Lea Desandre and regularly appears as a soloist in Ensemble Jupiter with whom he toured to the USA in spring 2022 (and again in 2023), to great critical acclaim:

But the most memorable of the program’s three instrumental pieces - a cello concerto in G minor - showcased Philippe, sweetly aching in a duetting passage with Dunford and ferocious, without losing airy suavity, in a very Vivaldian Allegro finale. – New York Times, March 2022

His first CD, devoted to Brahms’ Sonatas with Tanguy de Williencourt, was released in 2015 on the Evidence Classic label. In 2017, he joined harmonia mundi with a recording of works by Beethoven and Schubert. In 2019, he recorded Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christoph Eschenbach and in spring 2022, his latest album, J.S. Bach’s The Complete Cello Suites, was released, with Gramophone writing:

This biography should not be edited without permission from Askonas Holt. Philippe’s principal virtues are the way he allows the music to dance and his easy, unforced manner of projection. It’s a set that makes auditioning these Suites in a single fell swoop (which is what I did when initially listening) as undemanding as it is rewarding. – Gramophone, April 2022

Other recent highlights include debut performances with the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra and Christian Arming, Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin and Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne with Christoph Eschenbach, and chamber concerts with Antoine Tamestit in Köln, Cédric Tiberghien at the Hindsgavl Festival and a Carnegie Hall debut with Ensemble Jupiter. Bruno also held a residency with Orchestre Symphonique de Bretagne. The 2023-2024 season sees debuts with Royal Northern Sinfonia, Sinfónica de Tenerife and the Hallé Orchestra performing repertoire that includes Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1. In addition, Bruno will make his solo Wigmore Hall debut with pianist Tanguy de Williencourt (to coincide with his next album launch with harmonia mundi) and will perform solo Bach at the Flanders Festival, Gent.

Bruno is a Larsen Artist and a Pirastro artist. When it comes to gut, he exclusively plays Pirastro’s Oliv and Passione.

Bruno Philippe plays a 1760 cello by Gennaro Gagliano kindly loaned to him through the Beare’s International Violin Society.

Lorenzo Gatto
was born in Brussels in December 1986. He started playing the violin at the age of five and at eleven years old, he enters the Brussels Royal Conservatoire of Music, where he graduates at seventeen only with the highest honour.

He then studied with Herman Krebbers in the Netherlands, Augustin Dumay at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium and he finishes his academic journey by studying four years with Boris Kuschnir in Vienna. His work and determination are brilliantly rewarded as he won both the Second Prize and the Public’s Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2009.

His nomination as a ‘Rising Star’ in 2010 allows Lorenzo to make his recital debut on major European stages including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Vienna Musikverein, the Cité de la Musique in Paris and many others. It further expanded the possibilities of collaboration with orchestras and conductors such as Philippe Herreweghe, Vladimir Spivakov, Walter Weller, Jan Willem de Vriend, Jaap van Zweden, Martin Sieghart, Angrey Boreyko and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

In chamber music, Lorenzo shared the stage with, amongst others, Maria João Pires, Mischa Maisky, Martha Argerich, Menahem Pressler, Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden, Frank Braley and Gérard Caussé.

In 2015, Lorenzo started collaborating with the talented Belgian pianist Julien Libeer. Together, they recorded all of Beethoven sonatas and released a disc that was awarded with a Diapason d’Or of the year.

In 2024, he founds the string ensemble known as KARAVAN with which he is currently touring the project « One Season » & « Bach&Beyond ».

Lorenzo Gatto plays the ‘Joachim’ Stradivari from 1698.

In his spare time, Lorenzo enjoys a lifelong passion for everything that flies. Look up and see if you can spot him high in the sky, arriving at a concert flying a small plane or even a paraglider.

This album contains no booklet.