Stéphane Denève - Guillaume Connesson: Lost Horizon (2019) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

After Lucifer (2014) and Pour sortir au jour (2016), the French composer Guillaume Connesson returns to Deutsche Grammophon with "Lost Horizon", a new double-album directed by Stéphane Denève at the head of the Brussels Philharmonic. Already awarded the Victoire de la Musique Classique in the Composer category in 2015, Guillaume Connesson received last February his second award as Composer of the Year 2019 for "Les Horizons perdus", Concerto for Violin created in September 2018 that we find within this double album. These two CDs show two facets of the composer's art and offer two trips. One outside, with the fantastic and festive "Cities of Lovecraft" and the saxophone Concerto A Kind of Trane performed by Timothy McAllister. A work that recalls the memory of the jazzman John Coltrane, real incarnation of the solo instrument as he imagines it. The other is a journey inside oneself illustrated by the Violin Concerto Les Horizons Perdus. Performed by Renaud Capuçon, this score refers to James Hilton's novel "Lost Horizon" (1933), adapted for film by Frank Capra. "The Tomb of Regrets" is a slow movement in which Guillaume Connesson was tempted by a very linear, almost choral writing to explore intimate feelings, those of time passing, buried regrets and impossible returns . Created in a short period between 2015 (A Kind of Trane) and 2018 (Les Horizons Perdus), these four scores show the many facets of a composer who draws his inspiration from the sources of scholarly art as much as popular, without borders or taboos.

Tracklist:
1. Les cités de Lovecraft : I. Céléphaïs
2. Les cités de Lovecraft : II. Kadath
3. Les cités de Lovecraft : III. La cité du soleil couchant
4. A kind of Trane - Concerto for saxophone and orchestra : I. There is none other
5. A kind of Trane - Concerto for saxophone and orchestra : II. Ballade
6. A kind of Trane - Concerto for saxophone and orchestra : III. Coltrane on the dancefloor
7. Les horizons perdus - Concerto for violin and orchestra : I. Premier voyage
8. Les horizons perdus - Concerto for violin and orchestra : II. Shangri-La 1
9. Les horizons perdus - Concerto for violin and orchestra : III. Deuxième voyage
10. Les horizons perdus - Concerto for violin and orchestra : IV. Shangri-La 2
11. Connesson: Le tombeau des regrets

Personnel:
Renaud Capuçon, violin
Timothy McAllister, saxophone
Brussels Philharmonic
Stéphane Denève, conducto