condition (record/cover): NM / NM - Gatefold sleeve.  Trio À Cordes / Quatuors À Cordes on Harmonia Mundi divides its program between Pascal Dusapin and Philippe Manoury, two composers who would come to define French music's post-spectralist generation. The string trio and quartets belong to the most demanding repertoire: no orchestral timbre to hide behind, only naked strings that must sustain every note, every silence, every gesture exposed.

Dusapin had studied with Iannis Xenakis and Franco Donatoni, and his string writing bears traces of both masters: Xenakis's physical violence, those glissandi and clusters that treat instruments as bodies under duress, alongside Donatoni's combinatorial wit, that Italian gift for making complexity sound playful. The trio doesn't aim for beauty in any conventional sense; it aims for intensity, for presence, for music that grabs you by the collar and refuses to let go.

Manoury, closer to IRCAM and the world of computer-assisted composition, here works with purely acoustic means, demonstrating that his imagination didn't depend on technology. The quartets prove what his electronic works sometimes obscured: Manoury thinks instrumentally, understands how strings breathe and resist, knows the difference between what notation demands and what fingers can achieve. These are pieces that respect their performers even while pushing them toward extremity.

Harmonia Mundi bets on young composers (at the time of recording), building a catalog that subsequent decades would confirm as far-sighted. Both Dusapin and Manoury are today central figures in French music, their operas performed at major houses, their orchestral works programmed by leading ensembles. This LP captures them at the beginnings, before fame, when success was still wager rather than certainty. The string writing already shows the confidence that later achievements would justify.