Paris 1900, the era of the great universal exhibitions, is situated between the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Great War. The collection that we are devoting to him allows us to apprehend a Paris that can now seem very distant to us... It is the memory of a glorious, exciting era, of faith in the future, that of many technical and of the development of the arts. French instrumental craftsmanship, associated with the great musicians of the time, definitly impacted the future. This is the birth of the “French wind tradition”, which begins with Berlioz, then Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Poulenc, and continues today with Escaich and Beffa among others.
These recordings consecrate forgotten composers from French and Belgian schools. They give back their letters of nobility to popular instruments of their time, such as the cornet, widely used in the works of Bizet, Massenet, Berlioz or even Stravinsky's Petrushka. Both the flute and the cornet were also associated with the bandstand music that flourished across France.
