Krystian Zimerman is a Polish pianist and conductor, who has been described as one of the finest living pianists. In 1975, he won the IX International Chopin Piano Competition.

Regular chamber partners Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov, playing on period instruments, shine new light on two major works of chamber music written at the dawn of the 20th century.
The 'Sonata' is Franck’s most frequently played and recorded work. Premiered by Eugène Ysaÿe, in Brussels on 16 December 1886, a judge as shrewd as Alfred Cortot was lucid enough to make an arrangement for solo piano. Since then it has been transcribed for nearly every instrument on the planet and is a permanent staple of the repertoire.
Although it is devoid of passages in double stopping or pizzicato, the violin part, replete with treacherous chromatic twists and turns, nonetheless poses formidable difficulties of intonation.
Franck's influence on Ernest Chausson's 'Concert' is unmistakable. A late-Romantic hybrid, the work blends elements of piano and string quintet styles and here regains a freshness which delicately illuminates, in the hands of Faust and Melnikov. Completed a year after the Symphony in B flat, and again written for Ysaÿe, the 'Concert' asserts its roots in the heritage of Rameau and Couperin, thus foreshadowing Debussy’s 'Hommage à Rameau' (1905) and Ravel’s 'Le Tombeau de Couperin' (1917).

福雷的室内乐作品是非常精致的，给人的印象是好像它们的每一个音符 都经过了再三的斟酌和推敲，没有什么地方是漫不经心，或者打打马虎眼儿 可以对付过去的。两首动听而完美的小提琴奏鸣曲很好地代表了福雷这种学 院派的室内乐风格，尤其是 e 小调的第二首，更为含蓄、凝练，功力深厚。 而 A 大调的前一首则更多些浪漫情怀，有春天里柳枝婀娜般的优美。福雷音 乐很少有大风大浪的气象。也可以说他不是一个好的交响乐作曲家。然而以 室内乐的比较恬静、平和的形式去处理那些细腻而复杂的情绪变化，令乐思 婉转而伸张，福雷还是很有一手的。这一点，你一旦拿它比较过德沃夏克或 者柴柯夫斯基的室内乐作品，就很容易显示出来了。
本世纪小提琴名家中的葛鲁米欧也是个学院派。有些人把学院派理解为保守、呆板是片面的，我眼里“学院派”倒常常是个褒意的词哩，它意味着 精深、典雅，而且动必有方。福雷明白他自己写下的每一个音符，而我还相 信，葛鲁米欧也明白他拉出的每一个音符。如此这般，小提琴的音色自然就 漂亮起来了，而不需刻意的炫技。