Manuel Rosenthal's life overlapped pretty near perfectly with the arrival and passing of the twentieth century. He was born in 1904, the illegitimate son of a Russian immigrant woman and a wealthy Frenchman whose name he never knew, and grew up in dire poverty in Paris. He loved music sufficiently to teach himself the violin, and when his stepfather passed away in 1918, the 14 year old proved good enough on the instrument to support his mother and sister, playing in cafés and accompanying silent films. He enrolled in the Paris Conservatory at 16 to formalize his musical knowledge, but he was so far along that he was already manifesting talent as a composer. A sonatina that he submitted in 1921 not only passed muster with a committee that included Stravinsky, Bartók, Ravel, and Prokofiev, but received a public performance two months later. In addition to the violin, he also took up the sursoprano, a stringed instrument 1/4 higher than the violin, for which he wrote music.

Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux brings his sublime artistry to four French compositions from the nineteenth century, some inspired by aspects of Spain, including Lalo’s five-movement ‘Symphonie espagnole’ and Ravel’s spicy ‘Tzigane’.