Melikyan,Sofya Presence Lointaine CD

Sofya Melikyan's fascinating album has as it's inspiration the great Ricardo Vi?es, composer and pianist, champion of young progressive composers (he was Satie's favorite performer of his music), whose friends included among others Picasso, Gide, Colette, Cocteau. Cocteau said of him "Vi?es does not play, he elucidates". To define Vi?es "the shining light of contemporary art", as Adolfo Salazar described him in 1918 as the pianist of the French avant-garde is absolutely correct, albeit quite inadequate at the same time. Like his compatriots Granados and Malats, he was a student of de B?riot, and taking First Prize in piano at the Paris Conservatoire in 1894 followed by his first recital at the Salle Pleyel on 21 February 1895 marked the launch of a career that, over the course of four decades, would prove to be as frenetic as it was thrilling. Vi?es's insatiable curiosity for so-called 'modern music' and his ever restless temperament, always eager to discover neglected repertoire of the present day and to present it to the public as well as music from the past, became apparent very early on, as in his recital of 18 April 1898 at the Salle ?rard, at which he gave the premiere of the Menuet antique by one of his first and greatest friends in Paris, Maurice Ravel, or in his historic cycle of four concerts that he would give in the same hall between March and April 1905 devoted to 'Keyboard music from it's origins to the present day'.

1. Severac: en Languedoc 2. I. Vers Le Mas en F?te 3. II. Sur L'?tang, Le Soir 4. III. ? Cheval, Dans la Prairie 5. IV. Coin de Cimeti?re, Au Printemps 6. V. Le Jour de Foire, Au Mas 7. Vi±es: Quatre Hommages Pour Le Piano 8. I. Menuet Spectral (? la M?moire de Maurice Ravel) 9. II. en Verlaine Mineur (? la M?moire de Gabriel Faur?) 10. III. Thr?nodie Ou Fun?railles Antiques (? la M?moire de Erik Satie) 11. IV. Crinoline Ou la Valse Au Temps de la Montijo (Hommage ? L?on-Paul Fargue) 12. Ravel Maurice: Miroirs, M. 43: II. Oiseaux Tristes 13. Faur?: 3 Nocturnes, Op. 33: III. Nocturne in a Flat 14. Satie: Descriptions Automatiques 15. I. Sur Un Vaisseau 16. II. Sur Une Lanterne 17. III. Sur Un Casque 18. Mompou: Scenes D'enfants 19. I. Cris Dans la Rue 20. II. Jeux Sur la Plage I. Jeu 21. III. Jeux Sur la Plage II. Jeu 22. IV. Jeux Sur la Plage III. Jeu 23. V. Jeunes Filles Au Jardin