Aline Piboule offers us a journey to the country of light. For her first solo album, she brings together three fundamental French piano works, Fauré’s Ballade and Theme and Variations and Dutilleux’s Sonata, which has become one of her favourite pieces. The programme is made up of a succession of insistent variations on the theme of light, contrasting aesthetics which very often oscillate between shadows, sound and silences. Aline Piboule’s playing has a fairly typical French charm, fluctuating between robustness and tender sensuality.

Following a first solo CD devoted to Fauré and Dutilleux, Aline Piboule continues her exploration of the French school of piano music by inviting us to discover works by Louis Aubert, Pierre-Octave Ferroud, Gustave Samazeuilh and Abel Decaux – rare and unknown compositions which she has chosen for their harmonic richness, melodic quality and poetic inspiration. The music of these contemporaries of Debussy and Ravel (Louis Aubert gave the first performance of Valses nobles et sentimentales) was played at the time by major pianists (Marguerite Long, Francis Planté and Alfred Cortot). Aline Piboule restores these forgotten masters to the position they deserve in early 20th century French music.

With this new program recorded for Artalinna in Metz in April 2023, Aline Piboule continues her original musical journeys by associating two unexpected composers, both genius pianists, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) and Olivier Greif (1950-2000), who each one carried out a powerful mystical journey during their existence. Of the two, it brings together two works as beautiful as they are complementary. From Liszt, Ballade No. 2 as then sublimated by Blessing of God in Solitude, coming from poetic and religious harmonies. From Greif, two Sonatas, among his most beautiful works, Three Poems of Li T’ai Po (1977) and the Codex Domini (1994), both played in the critical edition produced by Anne-Élise Thouvenin. Two pages of Bach open and end this recital, filled with grandiose and intense feelings.