''Everybody knows, or at least thinks he knows, the composer Jean Wiener,'' says the sleeve-note, a trifle optimistically. Well, it is fair to say that Wiener was a prominent figure on the Parisian scene from the 1920s until his death, aged 86, in 1982, and Francophiles at least will be grateful for this opportunity to make his acquaintance.
Wiener is perhaps best known as guiding spirit of the ''Concerts salades'' of the 1920s, ''in which Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire rubbed shoulders quite happily with music by the Billy Arnold Jazz Orchestra or the player-piano version of The Rite of Spring''. This was a Paris where the idols were Satie, Milhaud, Stravinsky and ragtime, and all of these influences may be detected in the earlier pieces recorded here (the Sonatine syncopee and Sonata No. 1). It is quintessential 'wrong-note' music, lacking the individuality of Honegger and Poulenc, but for that reason all the more characteristic of its times.
In the untranslated, and most interesting section of the sleeve-note, Henri Sauguet calls Wiener's ''a free music, devoid of the notion of system or outdated academicism, an everyday music ( ''une musique dnas la vie''), music for its own contemporaries, friendly, sensual, demanding only that we accept it as a gift''. That is a fair enough assessment and some justification for the fact that the Trois moments, the Sonate sans nom and the Sonate demodee some 50 years on are still content with the same style depouille.
Omar Yagoubi plays with the requisite directness of touch and frank lyricism. Except for his own arrangements of the (apparently) well-known Touchez pas au Grisbi and Histoire sans parole, there is little scope for pianistic prowess. the recording is close and dry, catching a good deal of pedal noise; on CD, there are no separate tracks for the individual movements.'