Trio Hochelaga has become interested in the Swiss composer and conductor Ernest Alder (1853-1904). Now a forgotten figure in the history of music, Alder was once considered “a distinguished musician, known especially for his many clever arrangements for string quartets” (Le Menestrel). He wrote graceful musique de salon for piano, as well as choral and orchestral works, but it is as an arranger – especially of Romantic operas – that he is being rediscovered today.

The trio arrangements on this disc are of arias from classic 19th-century French operas such as Les Huguenots (1836) by Giacomo Meyerbeer, Mignon (1866) by Ambroise Thomas, Werther (1893) by Jules Massenet and Samson et Dalila (1877) by Camille Saint-Saëns. Several of these arrangements were for one or two pianos, but the instrumental line-up that seems to have inspired Alder most was that of the trio — either piano, violin and cello, or piano, flute and a string instrument.

Twelve of his trios, including versions of Werther and Mignon, were published in an 1894-95 collection entitled 'L’Opéra concertant'. This was the first of what became a successful series of collections that continued to be published after Alder’s death by Léon Roques, Henri Mouton and Émile Tavan.

This is the final recording by Trio Hochelaga in its original formation, as Stéphane Lemelin and Paul Marleyn left the trio in the summer of 2012.

Trio Hochelaga:
- Anne Robert, violin
- Paul Marleyn, cello
- Stéphane Lemelin, piano