For the second volume in the Schumann Collection launched with his brother Pierre, Theo Fouchenneret has surrounded himself with a fine team of chamber musicians to immortalise the series of works for wind instruments and piano from 1849. Like a gallery of legendary characters, oboe, horn and clarinet follow one another, giving way to the astonishing Andante and Variations for two pianos, two cellos and horn, in which the sketches follow one another with the intensity of a tale as thrilling as it is mysterious.

“There is a link between the style of the early masters and that of the innovators” asserted Schoenberg. The programme of this disk seeks to prove this saying of the master of the Second Viennese School. Hortense Cartier-Bresson sets up a dialogue between the fathers of serial music and Bach. Interweaving the Toccatas BWV 910-913-914 with the first Sonata of Berg, the Three Pieces of Schoenberg and the Variations of Webern, this recording explores the great Austro-Germanic tradition and its inheritance.