Jean-Philippe Collard, Augustin Dumay, Quatuor Muir - Chausson: Concerto en ré Majeur, Quatuor 'Inachevé' (1994)

This is one of the greatest chamber CDs, bringing together Chausson's timeless Concert with his elusive String Quartet in the most beautiful, idiomatic performances imaginable. Augustin Dumay and Jean-Philippe Collard have never been bettered as a duo, but they particularly are in their element in this music, given its full expression by their passion and strength, which combines with a sense of style that is as natural as speech. There is a feeling of restraint within the effulgence that is so attuned to this composer. The quartet, equally finely tuned in the hands of the Muir Quartet, is stripped of the expressive exuberance as if laying bare that reserve detected in the teeming notes of the Concert, like the confirmation of its actual meaning. It has a melancholy that is also suffused with consolation, and has a magically restorative effect on the listener - cares just float away as a spiritual essence comes into focus. The park on the cover with its ruined columns is the Parc Monceau in Paris, but seems to blend with the Buttes-Chaumont as seen in Rohmer's La femme de l'aviateur also from the early 80s, which has something of the same magic, keeping both creators and parks in the past and present tense, and dissolving all boundaries.