Currently on the piano faculty as Artist-in-Residence at New York’s Bard College, Franco-Irish pianist Isabelle O’Connell has worked with a who’s-who of contemporary composers, from Missy Mazzoli and Julia Wolfe to John Adams and Donnacha Dennehy. Her unwavering commitment to new music is upheld on Cocteau in its premiere of Irish composer Rhona Clarke’s 2022 titular work; it also, however, documents a particularly fertile period in twentieth-century French culture in presenting material by contemporaries of Cocteau (1889-1963). Pieces by Satie, Stravinsky, and Les Six members Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre appear alongside Clarke’s twenty-six-minute work, making…

…for a supremely rewarding presentation.

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