Anne Gastinel, Claire Desert - French Music For Cello And Piano (2011)

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Anne Gastinel, Claire Desert - French Music For Cello And Piano (2011)

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This is the 15th recording on Naïve by one of the label’s best selling artists, the renowned French cellist Anne Gastinel. On this new CD she is accompanied by her regular piano musical partner Claire Désert in three essential works of the French chamber repertoire, César Franck’s much loved Sonata in A major in the popular transcription for cello and piano, and Sonatas by Debussy and Poulenc.

Born in 1971, Anne Gastinel began playing the cello at the age of four while also studying the piano and the oboe. She gave her television début as concert soloist at the age of 10, and five years later finished in first place at the Music Conservatory in Lyon. She went on to complete her studies at the National Music Conservatory in Paris. In 1989, at the age of 18, Anne won first prize of the International Competition of Scheveningen and became the first French artist in forty years to reach the finals of the International Competition of Prague.

Over the past 12 years Anne Gastinel has performed with many internationally renowned orchestras and distinguished artists such as Kurt Sanderling, Semyon Bychkov, and Yuri Bashmet. Her recording career both in chamber and orchestral music has won her great acclaim from the international press and resulted in many international prizes, including the Victoires “Young Talent 1994”, Victoires “Best Recording of the year” 1995, the Prix “Fnac” in 1995 and 2000, and the Prix de l’Académie du disque et Classique d’Or by French Radio RTL in 1996 and 1998.

Composer: César Franck, Claude Debussy, Francis Poulenc
Performer: Anne Gastinel, Claire Désert

Reviews: This is an excellent version of Poulenc’s Cello Sonata. It has a persuasive sense of direction and a well-judged series of tempo decisions. It’s also warmly played, and ensemble between Anne Gastinel and Claire Désert is watertight. If your classic recording of choice is that of Pierre Fournier with Jacques Février—and I suppose that 1971 LP disc looms large in the discography—then you should know that the newcomers have their own views about things, and they ensure a convincing milieu for the work. Maybe the older pair breathed more naturally at certain points in the first movement—one feels their paragraphal phrasing is the more natural—but that doesn’t limit admiration for Gastinel and Désert, who take a more incisive tempo for the slow movement and sustain it well. It’s a passionate point of view, but then it is a passionate movement and one of the most outspoken in all of Poulenc’s music. Witty badinage restores things in the Ballabile third movement, and while Fournier emphasizes some of the more spectral moments in the finale with greater impact and immediacy, the more up-to-date and natural dynamic range of this Naïve recording proves laudable. This then is a compelling and first-class account of the sonata.


The Debussy sonata reprises the virtues of the Poulenc, though it does so in a way that signals the players’ freedom from convention. They don’t play in as arresting a manner as those pioneering French musicians Maurice Maréchal and Robert Casadesus, who, in their 1930 recording, performed with unselfconscious directness. But they do abjure some of the more outré gestures that have accreted to, say, the Sérénade’s pizzicatos, which is well and good in my book. They play with assurance throughout, though my own preferences lie with the classic older statement and also with the more phrasally suggestive playing of Tortelier and Gerald Moore in their 1948 disc, now in a huge Paul Tortelier EMI retrospective box.


The last work is the transcription of the Franck Violin Sonata made by Jules Delsart, with the approval of the composer, in 1888. This has been an increasingly popular option for cellists, and Gastinel and Désert play with a canny appreciation of when to press on and when to fine-down tone. Gastinel’s vibrato speed is well judged, and the pianist, who shoulders most of the truly taxing demands, acquits herself estimably.


This fine recital has been warmly recorded, is well balanced and reflects well on all concerned.