For Thierry Pécou, to live is to travel, and to travel is to write, as if to compose were at once to plunge into another universe, to take affective possession of the space, and, above all, to stand back and choose to live in the margins of one's everyday cultural milieu. The works presented on this CD bear witness to a constantly renewed artistic standpoint; they have been entrusted here to the expert fingers of another great traveller.

One might be forgiven for initially thinking that this recital featuring works for cello and piano by Franz Schubert, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg was, well, a stunt. After all, aside from their birth in the city of Vienna, what do the three composers have in common? Schubert was the quintessential master of lyrical Austro-German romanticism, while Webern and Berg were two of the three most reviled masters of atonal Austro-German expressionism – the third, of course, was Arnold Schoenberg – and one might think they'd be an impossible coupling.

Friends and frequent recital partners Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexandre Tharaud are reunited here for an album conceived as a collection of short stories, presenting both celebrated and little- known masterpieces of the repertory.
If the art of transcription is the hallmark of great performers, it must be said that these two partners are past masters at it. Throughout this lyrical yet virtuosic programme, music lovers will meet one surprise after another.