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It is perhaps not surprising that pianist Pascal Rogé -- a third-generation French musician -- has mastered the modern French piano repertoire. What is surprising is the actual breadth of his repertoire and the young age at which he excelled.

In 1962, at the age of 11, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, having previously studied with his mother. By the age of 15, he had won first prize for both piano and chamber music. At 18, he performed solo recitals in both Paris and London. But his major breakthrough was the first prize in the Jacques Thibaud International Competition in 1971. Several European engagements followed, and in 1974 he made his first tour to the United States, returning nearly every season. He has also become a favorite in Australia and Japan, where he has made over 20 tours.

Rogé's particular strengths lie in his sensitive and personal interpretations of 20th century French composers; he has made recordings of complete cycles of Ravel, Poulenc, and Satie, among others. His repertoire also includes d'Indy, Saint-Saëns, as well as the great German masters -- Haydn, Mozart, Brahms, and Beethoven. His recordings have received numerous awards, including the Grand Prix du Disque and an Edison award for the Ravel concertos. His first volume of Poulenc won the 1988 Gramophone award for Best Instrumental Recording, and his collaboration with Chantal Juillet and Truls Mørk won the 1997 Gramophone award for Best Chamber Music recording. In the new century, he began a new recording project for Onyx that included a complete Debussy cycle. He also began performing and touring with his wife, Ami Rogé. The pair commissioned a two piano concerto from Matthew Hindson, which they premiered in 2011.

He has taught at the Académie in Nice, but a busy international schedule has kept him from consistent teaching. More stylist than virtuosic, his solo pianism has been recognized for its decidedly French elegance, while his collaboration with orchestras has been noted for its faultless musicianship, and made him a favorite of conductors ranging from Charles Dutoit to Lorin Maazel to Kurt Masur.

Francis Poulenc was the leading composer of Les Six, the French group devoted to turning music away from Impressionism, formality, and intellectualism. He wrote in a direct and tuneful manner, often juxtaposing the witty and ironic with the sentimental or melancholy. He heavily favored diatonic and modal textures over chromatic writing. His music also shows many elements of pandiatonicism, introduced around 1920 by Stravinsky, whose influence can be heard in some of Poulenc's compositions, such as the religious choral work Gloria. Poulenc is regarded as one of the most important 20th century composers of religious music, and in the realm of the French art song, he is also a major voice of his time. Poulenc was also a pianist of considerable ability.

Poulenc was born in Paris on January 7, 1899, into a wealthy family of pharmaceutical magnates. The agrochemical giant Rhone-Poulenc is the present-day corporation started by his forebears. His mother was a talented amateur pianist who began giving him piano lessons at age five. Later, Poulenc studied with a niece of César Franck and then with the eminent Spanish virtuoso Ricardo Viñes, for whom he would later write music. At age eighteen, Poulenc wrote Rapsodie Nègre for baritone and chamber ensemble, which made him an overnight sensation in France. The young composer served in the military during the years 1918 to 1921, during which time he composed the popular Trois Mouvements Perpétuels (1918).

By 1920, Les Six -- Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Germaine Tailleferre (the sextet's lone female representative), Louis Durey, and Francis Poulenc -- had begun making its impression on the music world. In 1923, Poulenc wrote the ballet Les Biches, which Diaghilev staged the following year with great success, the public finding its mixture of lightness, gaiety, and occasional moments of sentimentality irresistible. Poulenc continued writing at a fairly prolific pace in the late '20s and early '30s, producing many piano compositions, songs, and other works. In 1935, he rekindled his friendship with baritone Pierre Bernac, thus launching a productive and enduring professional relationship. He also returned to the Roman Catholic Church that year when close friend Pierre-Octave Ferroud was killed in an automobile accident. Thereafter, he wrote many important works of a religious nature, the first of which were Litanies à la Vierge Noire, for soloists, chorus, and organ, and Mass in G for mixed a cappella chorus, both from 1936.

During World War II, Poulenc remained in German-occupied France, writing music of an antiwar or defiantly anti-Nazi bent, sometimes writing songs on texts by banned authors, such as Lorca. He also wrote a ballet, Les Animaux Modèles (1940-1941), Sonata for violin and piano (1942-1943; rev. 1949) dedicated to Lorca, and the masterful Figure Humaine (1943), a choral cantata which is a hymn to freedom. In the postwar years, Poulenc turned out his Sinfonietta (1947) and Piano Concerto (1949), both not entirely successful. In the period from 1953 to 1956, Poulenc produced his most ambitious work, the opera Dialogue des Carmelites, considered by many the greatest French opera of the 20th century.

Poulenc finished his last opera in 1958, La Voix Humaine, a work whose lone character talks (sings) on the phone to her deserting lover for the work's 45-minute length. Notable also in this period is his Gloria (1959), a work shorn of sanctimony and rich in communicative simplicity and fervent religiosity. Poulenc's last major work was his Sonata for Oboe and Piano in 1962, dedicated to the memory of Prokofiev, whom he had befriended in the 1920s. Poulenc died suddenly of a heart attack on January 30, 1963. ~ Robert Cummings

London's Philharmonia Orchestra is generally considered one of Britain's top symphonic ensembles and has sometimes been named as the very best. Formed by recording executive Walter Legge at the end of World War II, the orchestra benefited from the presence of several top Continental conductors in its first years and has generated an impressive recording catalog from the very beginning. Although London already boasted the world-class London Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestras, Legge resolved to create an ensemble that would equal the best in the German-speaking musical sphere. To this end, he recruited top young musicians (some 60 percent of the players were still serving in the British armed forces at the beginning) and, after he was turned down by friend Thomas Beecham, a roster of star German conductors. These included Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, Herbert von Karajan, and Otto Klemperer. At first, Legge avoided the appointment of a permanent conductor, and the players learned to produce superb results under several different kinds of artistic leadership.

Primarily a recording ensemble at first, the Philharmonia began giving concerts that were often innovative in content. The young Leonard Bernstein recorded Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major with the group, and the orchestra gave the world premiere of Strauss' Four Last Songs with soloist Kirsten Flagstad in 1950 at the Royal Albert Hall. In the mid-'50s, Furtwängler died and Karajan departed for Berlin; Legge appointed the 74-year-old Klemperer conductor for life. Klemperer's performances were often idiosyncratic but just as often brilliant, and many of his recordings with the Philharmonia remain in print. A complete cycle of Brahms symphonies under Klemperer was reissued by the firm Broken Audio in the 2010s.

The orchestra ran into trouble in the early 1960s as financial problems arose and several of its best musicians, including hornist Dennis Brain, met untimely deaths. Legge attempted to disband the group in 1964, but the players, encouraged by Klemperer, formed the New Philharmonia Orchestra and continued to perform. The orchestra performed at the Beethoven bicentennial in Bonn, West Germany, in 1970. That year, Lorin Maazel was appointed associate principal conductor to reduce the workload of the aging Klemperer, but he clashed with the orchestra members, who had maintained a self-governing structure. Instead, Riccardo Muti was appointed chief conductor in 1973. Four years later, the original name was restored.

Under Muti, the orchestra often recorded opera and entered upon what was widely regarded as a second golden age. In 1981, under conductor Kurt Sanderling, the Philharmonia made the first digital recording of Beethoven's complete symphonies. Muti was succeeded in 1984 by Giuseppe Sinopoli, whose performances of key British repertory such as the works of Elgar were criticized, but who extended the orchestra's reach in Italian opera. Christoph von Dohnányi ascended the podium in 1997 and took the orchestra on tours of continental Europe and, in 2002 and 2003, to a residency in New York. Bicontinental Finnish conducting star Esa-Pekka Salonen became chief conductor in 2008 and has continued to maintain the orchestra's high standards; his departure was announced for the year 2021, creating an opening at the very top level of English music-making. The Philharmonia continued to record for EMI after Legge's departure but moved to Deutsche Grammophon under Sinopoli and has since recorded for a large variety of labels. In 2019, the Philharmonia backed innovative Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen on her debut release, with Salonen conducting. ~ James Manheim

Charles Dutoit is among the world's most acclaimed conductors, perhaps best known for his long tenure as the music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He has also held positions with venerable orchestras around the world, such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo. Dutoit has collaborated with many leading musicians during his career, including Salvatore Accardo, James Galway, and especially Martha Argerich, with whom he won one of his two Grammy Awards and was also married to for a time. Though controversy has surrounded his late career and several associations were ended, he held the posts of co-director of Shanghai's MISA Festival and principal guest conductor of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra as of the mid-2020s.

Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, on October 7, 1936. He studied violin, viola, piano, and percussion as a child and became interested in conducting early after watching Ernest Ansermet leading the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in concert and rehearsal. Dutoit attended the Lausanne Conservatory, studying violin, piano, and conducting, then moved to the Geneva Conservatory to study viola and conducting, taking first prize in the latter and graduating in 1958. While still a student, Dutoit began his professional career, performing viola in several ensembles in South America and Europe. He also studied conducting with Alceo Galliera at Siena's Accademia Chigiana and attended Tanglewood in 1959. That year, he made his professional conducting debut, joining Argerich and a Radio Lausanne orchestra, and began regular guest-conducting appearances with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. His first appointment was as the Radio Zurich conductor from 1965 until 1967. The following year, he succeeded Paul Kletzki as the chief conductor of the Bern Symphony Orchestra, leading that group until 1978. In 1969, Dutoit married Argerich, and they had a daughter together. Though the marriage ended in 1973, the two continued a professional relationship.

Dutoit held several other posts during his Bern tenure, including with the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico (1973-1975) and the Gothenburg Symphony (1975-1978). In 1977, he was appointed artistic director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He refined that group and, thanks to a substantial and lengthy recording contract with the Decca label, brought the Montreal Symphony to international recognition. Among these acclaimed recordings are Holst: The Planets (1987), Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande (1991), and Berlioz: Les Troyens (1995); the latter earned Dutoit a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. During his tenure with the Montreal Symphony, Dutoit helmed the Philadelphia Orchestra's summer concert series at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts (1990-1999) and in Saratoga Springs (1990-2010). In 1991, he became the music director of the Orchestre National de France and took the same post with the NHK Symphony Orchestra from 1998 until 2003, after serving as principal conductor since 1996. Dutoit earned his second Grammy Award in 2000 for a recording of piano concertos by Bartók and Prokofiev, leading the Montreal Symphony with Argerich as a soloist. Dutoit stepped down from the Orchestre National de France post in 2001, and the next year, after complaints about his behavior by the Quebec Musicians Guild, he abruptly resigned from his Montreal position.

In 2008, Dutoit became the chief conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra and took the artistic director and principal conductor positions with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 2009. That year, he also began his tenure as the music director of the Verbier Festival Orchestra. He was named co-director of the MISA Festival in Shanghai in 2010, and the Philadelphia Orchestra named Dutoit its conductor laureate in 2012. In 2017, he became conductor emeritus of the Verbier Festival Orchestra, and he was given the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal Award. During that year and the following year, accusations of sexual assault were levied against Dutoit for incidents that occurred between the late '70s and 2010. He has denied all accusations. Engagements with multiple orchestras worldwide were canceled, he was stripped of his laureate title from the Philadelphia Orchestra, and he resigned his posts with the Royal Philharmonic in early 2018. Later that year, he was named the principal guest conductor of the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, continuing to hold that post and the co-directorship of the MISA Festival as of 2024. ~ Keith Finke