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In Search of lost Dance

“In the face of change, memory becomes precious. This is especially true for Maurice Ravel whose important source of creativity lies in evoking the memories of music from the past. In Ravel’s hand, these memories are delicately suspended between decadence and invention, between nostalgia and progressiveness. Such memories reside in the body, in the form of half-forgotten dances, to be simultaneously recalled and reinvented.
 

The Linos Piano Trio’s In Search of Lost Dances recording centres on the time of greatest change in Ravel’s life, juxtaposing his seminal Piano Trio, written weeks before the outbreak of the First World War, with Le Tombeau de Couperin, written between 1914 and 1917—each of its six movements dedicated to a friend lost to the war. Mirroring each other, the baroque dances of Le Tombeau illuminate the less obvious dances hidden in the Piano Trio, while the textural innovation in the Piano Trio serves as a model for Linos to reimagine Le Tombeau in this new trio arrangement. These two major works are complimented by Pavane pour une Infante défunte (also transcribed by Linos), a much earlier work evoking the stately 16th century Spanish dance. Marcel Proust, whose epic book In Search of Lost Time was the inspiration for the title of this recording, loved Pavane pour une Infante défunte and had it played at his own funeral.
 

While both the titles of the Pavane and Le Tombeau have funereal overtones, the music itself is vivid and full of light. It is as if through these backward-glancing dances, Ravel processed his losses. However, the emphasis for us in In Search of Lost Dances is not on the “lost”, but rather on the “search”: a new path through these three well-known pieces, re-finding their novel ingenuity.” (Linos Piano Trio)

On period instruments
Konrad Elias-Trostmann Violin (Peter Greiner 2010, after Guarneri del Gesù 1743. Gut strings (3 plain, 1 wound) Vladimir Waltham Cello (Naples ca. 1880. Gut strings (2 plain, 2 wound) Brach Boondiskulchok Piano (Érard Concert Grand 1882 No. 56105)