Product DescriptionFrench and Russian music have always maintained cultural ties, from the Francophile Empress Catherine II to the admiration of young Debussy for Mussorgsky, Glinka and Tchaikovsky's travels in France to the long stay of Boieldieu in St. Petersburg. These musical complicities find a harmonious echo in the Franco-Russian program of this disc, devoted to the harp. The works that compose it were either written directly for the instrument, or the result of transcriptions or arrangement of operatic arias, as it has been for decades. The hits of the time, of Mozart, Gounod, Tchaikovsky and many others, were varied and entrusted to the most diverse musical formations - a distant equivalent of our current ""remixed"" versions. This tradition flourished from the beginnings of opera until the twentieth century (and even twenty-first century), as evidenced by the conclusive Fantasia of this record, composed by Ekaterina Walter Khüne. - Charlotte Loriot (Excerpt from the booklet)