French Touch is built around colour as a form of musical thought. Ravel, Cras and Debussy do not use timbre as decoration: changes of light, density and perspective shape the direction of the music itself.
The programme moves between different chamber formations. Ravel’s septet opens the sound beyond the quartet; Cras brings together distinct instrumental voices, while Debussy’s Première Rhapsodie and Trio Sonata reduce the ensemble and bring gesture, breath and detail to the foreground.
The result is not a portrait of a single style, but a changing landscape: transparent at times, physical at others, held together by the attention each composer gives to colour.