Although Alexandre Boëly (1785–1858) is best remembered as an important Parisian organist-composer, his piano music is as good as unknown. Yet it is an important link between the Baroque and Classical worlds of eighteenth-century France and the emerging Romanticism of the nineteenth. This recording, on an Érard piano from 1853, highlights both its Classical poise and its Romantic charm. It reveals Boëly as a forerunner of composers like Saint-Saëns, whom he taught, as well as other piano pioneers such as Alkan, Chopin and Liszt, all of whom this prominent Parisian musician and teacher may well have known personally.

Stephanie McCallum is Associate Professor in piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music of the University of Sydney, where she herself studied with Alexander Sverjensky and with the noted Liszt player, Gordon Watson. After advanced studies in England with the Alkan authority Ronald Smith, she made her Wigmore Hall debut in 1982. She has appeared extensively as a soloist in Australia, France and the United Kingdom. Her recording of the complete Alkan Recueils de chants for Toccata Classics (TOCC0157 and 0158) was received with universal praise. She followed them up with a Toccata Classics album of piano music of Guy Ropartz (TOCC0326).