The talented young French clarinettist Pierre Génisson, a graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, has chosen to devote his first solo recording, on the Aparté label, to music that, as he puts it, “is part of [his] DNA”. To a programme of French music, therefore, with works by Claude Debussy, Ernest Chausson, Camille Saint-Saëns, Jean Françaix, Francis Poulenc and Jules Massenet: pieces of rare sensitivity and emotion, written for clarinet and piano, all of them composed, in close collaboration with professors of the Paris Conservatoire, for the exit examinations of that institution. The compositions span some 150 years.

“French composers, especially those close to the impressionist movement, knew how to magnify the timbres of these two instruments and bring out an amazing palette of sound and an outstandingly rich harmony. For me these works are three-dimensional, with light, colour and texture. That is what I wish to share through this recording.” - Pierre Génisson, June 2014