- Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894) was born in Veviers, Belgium. He studied music and philosophy in Paris. A visit to Bayreuth brought him under the spell of the music of Richard Wagner. Upon his return he took lessons with César Franck, who was his mentor and greatest music inspiration. Lekeu was one of the foremost talents of his generation and his tragically early death at age 24 of typhoid fever robbed music history of a great promise.
- This new recording presents the complete piano music by Lekeu. Lekeu was a prolific composer already as a teenager, and he left a considerable amount of music, including a whole repertory of piano pieces. Claude Debussy, introducing his “unfinished Quartet for piano and strings” in 1896, wrote “[..] Yes, there is a Belgian school. Next to Franck, Lekeu is one of its most remarkable representatives, this Lekeu, the only musician to my knowledge whom Beethoven really inspired”. Also, the Boston Herald wrote: “Lekeu's voice was his own. His music is not like that of other men; he thought in his own way and his emotional eloquence in the quartet is genuine and convincing…”.
- Only a few of his piano works have been published: the monumental Piano Sonata in G minor, the Trois Pièces and a Mazurka. All other works on these two CDs have been gathered in manuscript from various libraries, including fugues, character pieces and a series of Morceaux égoïstes.
- Jacopo Salvatori is composer and pianist. He studied piano and composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich. Jacopo’s recent activity includes two operas, premiered at Grachtenfestival in Amsterdam and Theater an der Wien. He recorded the complete piano works by Debussy, Etudes by Glass and Mendelssohn’s Lieder Ohne Worte.
