The duo album is released today on Lantern Records: Fauré, Debussy and Poulenc, recorded in three long evenings in a converted chapel with the microphones close and the lights mostly off. We wanted it to sound the way the music feels at the end of a recital, not the beginning.
The booklet essay is Tomas's, and it is better than my playing on at least one of the tracks. He disputes which one.
A decade ago this month, Tomas and I played our first concert together — a lunchtime recital we programmed in an afternoon and rehearsed for a fortnight. The argument about the tempo of the Debussy finale began at that first rehearsal and is still going.
To mark the anniversary we are recording, touring the programme through the spring, and adding one piece we have always talked ourselves out of. It stays a surprise until Aldeby.
The Chamber Review has made Alone in a Room its Record of the Month — kind words for a record made in an empty hall in January with the heating off, which is roughly what the Kodály asks for.
Thank you to everyone who has written about it, and to the three people who have told me, independently, that the Dutilleux made them cry on public transport.