AUBERT, LOUIS (1877–1968)

Jean-Pierre Armengaud is considered a leading interpreter of French music and a specialist in impressionist and expressionist repertoire, and is renowned for his ‘fluidly supple playing, his round and mellow tone’ (Classica). As a concert artist his programmes are notable for the extent and variety of their repertoire. He has appeared in major concert halls around the world, performing in over 40 countries, and given masterclasses at leading conservatoires. His albums for Naxos and Grand Piano feature music by Debussy, Roussel, Poulenc, Aubert, d’Indy, Dutilleux and others. As a musicologist and writer he has published a biography of Erik Satie (Fayard, 2009, which won the 2009 Prix des Muses) and a book of essays on Debussy, Claude Debussy: La trace et l’écart (L’Harmattan, 2018). He has been director for musical programming at Radio France and is associate professor at the Paris-Sorbonne University and professor emeritus at the University of Évry Val d’Essonne at Paris-Saclay University.

Pianist Olivier Chauzu trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, where he obtained First Prize for Piano followed by First Prize in Chamber music, studying under Gabriel Tacchino, Théodore Paraschivesko, Jean-Claude Pennetier and György Sebök. He was also a pupil of Leon Fleisher, Vitaly Margoulis and Dimitri Bashkirov before further studies at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Alberta, Canada. A prizewinner in Barcelona’s 1989 Maria Canals International competition, he went on to be awarded the Prix Claude Debussy in the Yvonne Lefébure competition in Saint-Germain-en-Laye the following year.

Louis Aubert, like his contemporaries Joseph Guy Ropartz (1865–1955) and Paul Le Flem (1881–1984), was of Breton origins: he was born on 19th February in Paramé, today part of Saint-Malo. Even as a child Aubert had an excellent ear for music—he was a gifted pianist and sang as a treble chorister in the main churches of Paris. His talents were noted by one of his first teachers, Charles Steiger, who soon brought him to the attention of Albert Lavignac, a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Aubert went on to study harmony with Lavignac, discovering the great composers in the history of music along the way. He also studied piano with Antoine-François Marmontel and, later, Louis Diémer. Aubert had begun studying composition with Fauré in 1893, and by 1896 his fellow students also included Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt, George Enescu, Charles Koechlin, Jean Roger-Ducasse, Paul Ladmirault and Émile Vuillermoz.