Anna Noakes; Hugh Webb; Bob Smissens; Sophie Langdon - Jean-Michel Damase: Music for Flute, Violin, Viola and Harp

The inherently civilised music of the composer and pianist Jean-Michel Damase (1928-2013) reflects, to an endearing degree, the combination of subtlety, mastery and - as we hear in this collection - the inspiration and lasting high quality of wind playing in his native France. This inherent quality for long encouraged the country's composers to write with a particularly sensitive ear for the possibilities of wind instruments - few national composers in the twentieth-century could write for such soloists and ensembles with the felicity and natural inspiration as the French exhibited. c Bob Matthew- Walker