Francis Poulenc

Sonata for clarinet and piano

• Allegro tristamente 5’45
• Romanza5’02
• Allegro con fuoco3’29

Robert Schumann

Phantasiestücke op.73

• Zart mit Ausdruck 4’08
• Lebhaft, leicht4’15
• Rasch mit Feuer4’33

Robert Schumann

Drei Romanzen op.94

• Romanze n°1 in A minor 4’02
• Romanze n°2 in A major4’38
• Romanze n°3 in A minor5’12

Johannes Brahms

Sonata no.2 in E flat major op.120 no.2

• Allegro amabile 8’55
• Allegro appassionato5’34
• Andante con moto – Allegro7’13

Alban Berg

Four Pieces for clarinet and piano op.5

• Mäßig – Langsam 1’25
• Sehr langsam1’48
• Sehr rasch1’07
• Langsam2’46

Michel Dalberto

Born in Paris in 1955, Michel Dalberto was thirteen when he entered the class of Vlado Perlemuter, one of Alfred Cortot’s favourite pupils, at the Paris Conservatoire. Jean Hubeau also had a great influence on the young pianist.

At the age of twenty he won the First Mozart Competition in Salzburg and was unanimously awarded the Clara Haskil Prize. The First Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition (where he succeeded Radu Lupu, András Schiff and Murray Perahia) sealed his reputation in 1978.

He was then invited to play in most of Europe’s musical centres with such conductors as Erich Leinsdorf, Kurt Masur, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Charles Dutoit, Sir Colin Davis, Yuri Temirkanov and Daniele Gatti. He is also a guest at major festivals, including Lucerne, Florence, Aix-en-Provence, the Wiener Festwochen, Edinburgh, Schleswig- Holstein, La Grange de Meslay, La Roque d’Anthéron, Newport, Miami and Seattle. Since the beginning of his career, Michel Dalberto has been acknowledged as one of the leading interpreters of Schubert and Mozart. Among his other composers of predilection are Liszt, Debussy, Fauré, Schumann and Ravel.

A renowned chamber musician, he plays in trio formation with Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, in duo partnerships with Boris Belkin, Vadim Repin, Nikolaj Znaider, Yuri Bashmet, Gérard Caussé, Truls Mørk and Emmanuel Pahud, and performs the piano quintet repertory with the Ébène and Modigliani quartets. In the domain of vocal music, he has partnered Jessye Norman, Barbara Hendricks and Nathalie Stutzmann. Michel Dalberto has also acquired experience as a conductor over the past few years and has conducted many orchestras in Asia and Europe.

Michel Portal

Having found himself at the confluence of several spheres of the musical scene, Michel Portal is probably one of the musicians in Europe who has most consistently explored – and above all lived through – the aesthetic issues that have affected music in the second half of the twentieth century, both in its questioning of traditional categories (soloist, performer, composer) and in its instrumental practices.

The French clarinettist, saxophonist and composer is an eclectic instrumentalist who is equally at home in classical music and jazz. An interpreter of Mozart, Brahms, Berg, Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio and Kagel, and an award-winning composer of film soundtracks, he has also been one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century French and European jazz.

Michel Portal is a highly inspired soloist and chamber musician, combining a limpid and rigorous reading of the works he performs with an extraordinary expressiveness that indisputably sets him apart from the conventional paths. He has always refused to let music stand still, letting his imagination and inventiveness run wild in improvisation, for which he sometimes abandons the clarinet for the bandoneon or saxophone.

A renowned artist in both the jazz and classical worlds, Michel Portal plays alongside classical musicians such as Maria João Pires, Bruno Canino and Michel Dalberto, and jazz musicians such as pianists Bojan Zulfikarpašić and Jacky Terrasson, accordionist Richard Galliano, drummer Daniel Humair, and double bass players Bob Guérin and Henri Texier.