Album: Pascal Roge, Poètes du Piano (Onyx)

Poètes du Piano is the perfect description for this beautifully sequenced selection of Romantic piano pieces, a series of exquisite miniatures by the likes of Chopin, Ravel, Fauré and Poulenc, in which delicacy and brevity are prized over the more prosaic charms of full-scale works.

It's also a welcome relief, during the current bicentennial inundation of Chopin recordings, to hear just a few of his Préludes, Ballades, Nocturnes and Études interspersed with those of his successors, enabling the listener to trace the threads between, say, Chopin's "Nocturne No. 13 in C minor" and Fauré's "Nocturne No. 1 in E flat minor".

DOWNLOAD THIS Nocturne No. 1 in E flat minor; Étude pour les arpèges composées; Étude in A flat; Prélude (Book II) Canope