Piano Trios op. 32 & 72 / Berceuse de Jocelyn

Salon français
This recording features yet another magnificent musical trove and rediscovery by the Trio Parnassus: the French late-romanticist Benjamin Godard. This composer's trios were extremely popular and in high demand in European salons at the beginning of the twentieth century. A hundred years ago the English chamber music authority Walter Wilson Cobbett even ennobled his works as "enchanting and recommendable without hesitation."

Académie Française
Little has been written about Benjamin Godard even in the relevant secondary literature. He was from a well-to-do Parisian family and gained fame as a child prodigy. He began instruction in violin at an early age and in 1865, at the age of sixteen, wrote his first sonata for violin and piano. Godard belonged to the Jeune Académie Française, whose members wanted to include a French tone in their works. Godard made a name for himself throughout Europe as an outstanding symphonist and opera composer. The highest honors were bestowed on him when he was appointed to the post of professor at the Paris Conservatory in 1887. He certainly would have played a larger role in music history if he had not died at the early age of forty-five.