Louis Vierne will always be best remembered as one France’s most outstanding organ composers, but his piano works are part of a significant wider oeuvre and notable for their colourful and inspired inventiveness. Each of the Douze Préludes carries an evocative title in music filled with the pain and tumult of war and loss, while the epitaphs in Solitude were composed shortly after the deaths of Vierne’s brother and eldest son. Including recently published manuscripts, this is the second of two albums covering repertoire that deserves a place in the pantheon of French piano music.

Louis Vierne’s name will always be associated with the organ. He is well known for his six Organ Symphonies and is considered one of the great fin de siècle French organists. As organist at Notre-Dame de Paris from 1900 to 1937 and teacher of Nadia Boulanger and Maurice Duruflé, among others, he is recognised as a highly influential figure in early 20th-century music.

The first volume of this series (Naxos 8574296) was welcomed as a ‘lost treasure of the French composer – a task well worth undertaking’ in Pizzicato, with Sergio Monteiro further acclaimed as a pianist who ‘knows exactly how to create moods, how to distil refined tones, to let the music rest and reverberate inwardly, so that it also has an emotional effect.’