Angèle Dubeau: Reset and Refresh

Choosing music for a concert, album or even this playlist is, for Angèle Dubeau, an intensely personal experience. “I like to begin with exploratory listening,” the Canadian violinist tells Apple Music Classical. “I let the music speak and wait until the goosebumps—until I fall in love at first hearing.” Reset and Refresh features music by composers that Dubeau has performed and recorded over the years. One of Philip Glass’ most celebrated pieces, the gentle, lilting opening movement to Glassworks, opens the playlist, leading naturally into the iridescence of Ólafur Arnalds’ “New Grass”, with its haunting meditative melancholy. We move next to “Dappled Light” by Luke Howard, played by one of Dubeau’s favourite musicians, the saxophonist Jess Gillam, before launching into “a little trip”, as Dubeau describes it, “through space and time”. Beautiful pieces by Rameau, Bach, Elgar, Respighi and Chopin feature, too. “For me,” she says, “there’s something comforting and essential in the music of the great creators of the past.” Woven throughout are the minimalist purity of Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, the childlike “Eliza Aria” by Elena Kats-Chernin, as well as the post-classical, hypnotic worlds of Poppy Ackroyd and Ludovico Einaudi. For Dubeau, Einaudi’s music is “soothing, comforting and evocative—it dwells within us for a long time”. “These works will awaken and stimulate your senses, and invite you to explore and broaden your horizons,” she adds. “I hope this playlist will become part of your daily life.”