With this programme of music for cello and piano, Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih transport us to the world immortalized in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu – the Parisian high society and its glittering salons. For the composers of the time these provided a perfect platform for the introduction of new works, performed by the finest musicians in France for a sympathetic, educated and rich (!) audience. And for the music-loving Proust they offered countless opportunities to meet the composers that he so admired (and others that he may have admired a bit less…)

For the album "The Secret Fauré", released in 2018, the Basel Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Principal Conductor Ivor Bolton received fantastic reviews: "The music of Fauré … unfolds its attraction only gradually and very subtly, with a gentle, addictive spell can make." (NDR Kultur) In his new album, the orchestra presents a number of other orchestral and concert works by the French composer, Gabriel Fauré. Most of the recordings are based on the new critical edition of Fauré's works published by Bärenreiter-Verlag, whose score has been edited according to the latest scientific criteria.

Composed in 1879, the Piano Quintet in F minor by César Franck belongs to the fruitful final period of his creative life. It heralded the start of an impressive sequence of late orchestral and chamber pieces which set the seal upon his career. The Piano Quintet was premiered in Paris on 17 January 1880 by the Marsick Quartet with Saint-Saëns at the piano. During the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 1920s, it was Gabriel Fauré who made the most substantial and lasting contribution to French chamber music. Faurés Piano Quintet no.1 renews the powerful concentration of his earlier Piano Quartets in its outer movements, while also looking forward to the composers later works in the sophisticated phrasing and chromaticism of its extended Adagio. Vibrant and spirited, it may be counted among the composers finest creations.