For the 200th anniversary of the birth of Franz Liszt, pianist François-Frédéric Guy has recorded an impressive album of the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses and the Sonata in B minor, a presentation that covers two CDs and demonstrates both the composer's inexhaustible imagination and the performer's commitment to the music. Because Harmonies poétiques et religieuses is predominantly defined by its meditative quality and serene moods, it contains some of Liszt's most sustained and shimmering music, and the expressive control required to play at a soft level for most of the work is fully evident in Guy's rapt and gentle performance.

Brahms’s Trio op.114, originally conceived for clarinet (like the two Sonatas op.120), is presented here in its version with viola: ‘Like all Brahms’s works, this trio is a vocal, melodic piece. And the viola is perhaps the instrument of the string quartet that comes closest to the human voice’, says violist Miguel Da Silva. ‘This version with viola obliges me, as a cellist, to listen differently: our two stringed instruments must “breathe” together and match their articulation’, continues Xavier Phillips. These three works from late in Brahms’s career testify to his modernity: ‘Brahms was often considered a classical composer who was impervious to modernity, the guardian of a certain tradition’, says pianist François-Frédéric Guy, who agrees with Schoenberg that he was, on the contrary, highly innovative: ‘We have a fine example, in the trio, of the extraordinary modernity of his combinations of rhythm and timbre: he is a total innovator.'