THE FLOWER OF FRANCE,

MUSIC OF GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE

A NEW RECORDING BY

ACCLAIMED PIANIST QUYNH NGUYEN

NOW AVAILABLE

Release coincides with Bastille Day

Award-winning Vietnamese American pianist Quynh Nguyen’s (pron. Quin Nwen) newest recording The Flower of France, Germaine Tailleferre, Works for Piano [MA-1306], is now available on the Music & Arts label. The album features works, curated by Nguyen, originally for solo piano, as well as transcriptions and excerpts from Tailleferre’s ballets and film scores representing some of the composer’s best and most significant works, including a number of tracks rarely played or recorded.

The works on this album span 60 years, from the lyrical Impromptu – Tailleferre’s first published work, composed in 1912 at age 20 to Singeries (Monkey Business), which was written in 1975, near the end of her career. The title is derived from the solo piano suite Fleurs De France, a group of short character pieces Tailleferre composed in 1930, each dedicated to a flower that evokes landscapes in distinct regions of France.

Named one of the “19 Young Stars of Tomorrow” by Musical America, Quynh Nguyen has performed extensively throughout the United States, Asia and Europe including Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France, in notable concert venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Freer Gallery, the Berlin Konzerthause and the Opera House in Hanoi, Vietnam. The Boston Globe praised her as “a musical and expressive player” who is “sensitive and poetic, and excels in everything that requires elegance, proportion, balance, taste and wit.” For her Carnegie Recital Hall debut, the critic Harris Goldsmith called Nguyen's pianism and music-making “graced with beauty and exuberance” hailing her “a real artist; a wonderfully communicative performer.”

Nguyen, who grew up in Hanoi surrounded by a city filled with French architecture and influences and now lives in New York, fell in love with the romanticism, color and harmonic inventiveness of Tailleferre’s music while studying in Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship. In the album notes, Nguyen says Tailleferre’s early compositions “remind me of Chopin and were heavily influenced by Debussy and Ravel, with a freshness of melodies and unexpected modulations that’s incredibly alluring. The music she wrote later in life combines the baroque characteristics and forms found in Bach’s works and the neoclassical style of Stravinsky with the influence of impressionism.”

Tailleferre (1892–1983) came of age in the explosively creative days of 1920s Paris. Well known as the only female member of Les Six, the group of composers which included Darius Milhaud, Louis Durey, Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc and Arthur Honegger, her circle of friends also included Charlie Chaplin, Picasso, Modigliani, Diaghilev, Ravel, Stravinsky and Monteux.

The Flower of France is sponsored by the Sorel Organization and marks Nguyen’s debut on the Music & Arts label. Her three earlier recordings on the Arabesque label include works of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Ravel, Schubert, and Messiaen. In reviewing the Schubert and Chopin recording, International Piano Magazine said of Nguyen, "Rarely does one hear a young artist with such a naturally flowing sense of melodic line - vivid and unforced - that permits the music to breathe uninhibited."

Her upcoming recordings include a world premiere album of The Complete Works of Paul Chihara, to be released on the Naxos American Classics Series this Fall. Nguyen performed the world premiere of Chihara's Concerto-Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, which was written for her, in October 2022 with the Vietnamese National Symphony under the baton of conductor Honna Tetsuji at the Hanoi Opera House. The concert commemorated the normalization of US-Vietnam diplomatic relations. Her performance of the concerto with the London Symphony will be included in her upcoming Naxos recording and she will perform the American premiere with the Seattle Symphony in January of 2024. Other recent highlights include a performance this past April at the Fulbright Prize ceremony in Washington DC honoring Dr. Fauci, which also featured a performance by Renee Fleming.

Dr. Nguyen is a graduate of The Juilliard School, Mannes College of Music, and the Graduate Center of CUNY. She is the recipient of several highly prestigious scholarships and awards, including the United States Presidential Academic Fitness Award, the American Prize and a Fulbright Fellowship.

Click on the boxes below for audio files and booklet:

More information on Quynh Nguyen may be found at:

www.quynhpiano.com

For interview requests, physical copies or more information,

please contact Genevieve Spielberg

at 908-608-1325 or genevieve@gsiartists.com

Recordings by Quynh Nguyen: