Various Artists - Le Long Du Quai [CD]

The poet Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907) was the first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1901. Although he is nevertheless largely forgotten today, his poems have inspired a number of musicians (including Fauré, Enescu and Vierne) to write wonderful compositions. Marie-Pierre Roy and Justine Eckhaut have assembled an impressive selection of these 'mélodies' in a fascinating album that shows the stylistic range of French song composition at the turn of the century and beyond: an art of suggestion and refinement, sometimes of a lighter nature, but always a world where poetry and music combine.