GEORGES ANTOINE (1892-1918): Piano Quartet in D Minor, Op. 6, Violin Sonata in A Flat, Op. 3.

Description: Although Antoine served in the Belgian army throughout the war, he wasn't killed in action; he died of chronic asthma four days after the armistice. These two chamber works occupied him throughout most of the war, almost all of them written without a piano since he was either in the trenches or in a hospital for his illness. The expected influences of Franck, Fauré and Lekeu are there but Antoine's personal voice is still there, especially in the quartet; what might have come later from such a young composer who can sound like an exhausted, beaten-down old man in its Assez lent movement and then produce a radiant, surging, almost ecstatic finale? Oxalys.