In his excellent liner note, Matt Haimovitz singles out structure and joie de vivre as two salient characteristics of French music, and his playing fully endorses this judgment. His tone (on his beloved cello now happily restored after a serious accident) embraces both the light-hearted and the solemn without ever becoming scratchy or dull, and he is sensitively supported by his accompanist...overall this is an impressive and enjoyable disc.

There’s an autumnal air to the music on this album, and not just because much of it was written in the shadow of the last century’s two world wars. The playing has a serenity and often delicacy, and a pervasive maturity that weaves disparate pieces into an appealing, seamless recital of 20th-century French cello-and-piano works.