More than a strict panorama of a period, Joseph Moog shares with us a sentimental state of mind, his nostalgia for an era full of creativity and intellectual exuberance, which, in a time of growing political, social and economic tensions, brought all areas of art, and naturally music, to an unprecedented peak.

The German pianist discovered the freedom and spirit of adventure that floated in the air at the turn of the 20th century during the intense weekends of his younger age when his parents used to meet friends and discuss scores, recordings and videos of all sorts of works and performances. He resurrects here the inspiring atmosphere that, as a child, awakened his musical curiosity.

The half-expressed regrets of the Ukrainian Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952) rubbing shoulders with the twirling mischievousness of Papillons by Moriz Rosenthal (1862-1946). The subtle melancholy of Poulenc (Mélancolie, 1940) whips the veiled sadness of golden times (Vincent d’Indy, Nocturne, 1886), and the anxious velocity of Leschetizky, halfway between Chopin and Schumann, find a lighter counterpart in the aerial innocence of Cécile Chaminade.

This programme is an invitation to escape into an enchanted dream world, embodied in the moments when Rachmaninov reinvents Kreisler (Liebesfreud, Liebesleid). In this retrospective of the world of yesterday, oniric but moving, sometimes elegiac, everywhere smiling, Moog evokes the intimacy of home, the domestic comfort, ultimate refuges before the inevitable irruption of industrial progress.