After the signal event that was World War I, gifted young composers trooped into the French metropolis full of hope.
In 1925, the publisher Michel Dillard coined the term L’École de Paris (‘The Paris School’) in reference to the foreign
composers then living in Paris, principally the Hungarian Tibor Harsányi (1898–1954), Poland’s Alexandre Tansman
(1897–1986), Bohuslav Martinu from Czechoslovakia (1890–1959), Russia’s Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977), and
the Romanian Marcel Mihalovici (1898–1985), all of whose works he specialised in disseminating.
These composers came to Paris from Eastern Europe and all, with the exception of Martinu [and Swiss composer
Conrad Beck (1901–1989)], died there. All five initially addressed the difficult task of translating their countries’ folk
music idioms into standard musical notation.
Several works on this programme are heard in their world premiere recordings.