Gérard Caussé: Viola Legend - The Erato Years

No complaints about what's here and it's splendid to have so much of this superb violist's work gathered together for the first time and at a good price. But compilation-wise this is very weird.It says 'The Erato Years' but I rhave no idea what Warner intended by this. Yes there are Caussé Erato recordings here but by no means all he made for that label. Mostly they are EMI recordings....but, again, far from complete (of course EMI has been absorbed by Warner and some of their output is reissued under the Erato badge, but these EMI Caussé recordings had nothing whatever to do with Erato when they were made). Then, even more bizarrely, we have one disc originating from Mirare, one from Radio Télévision Suisse and several pieces the provenance of which is only given as 'courtesy of Gérard Caussé'. The publicity comment 'No rival sets of similar viola collections currently available' is actually incomprehensible - what do 'rival' and 'similar' mean?Another thought. Caussé went on to Deutsche Grammophon but presumably has a lot of recording life left in him, so who knows there may be more 'Erato' recordings to come....

Whilst the promotional material says "No rival sets of similar viola collections currently available", listeners might like to seek Yuri Bashmet's 9CD set: Yuri Bashmet: The Complete RCA Recordings.