2013 sees the bicentenary of the births not only of Wagner and Verdi but also of the maverick French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan.

Alkan’s music was little appreciated during his lifetime (1813–83), and in the century which followed, when he was largely lost from sight, but now he is increasingly recognised as one of the most individual personalities in all music.

The five albums he called Recueils de chants – miniature tone-poems which marry Classical constraint to virtuoso Romantic excess – provide an attractive gateway to his freewheeling imagination.

This is the first volume of a two-CD series presenting the first recording of the complete Chants in over twenty years and is accompanied by the first-ever recording of the ‘Introduction and Impromptu’ Une fusée.