Composer: Mélanie Bonis, Cécile Chaminade, Armande de Polignac, Juliette Folville, Pauline Viardot, Marguerite Beclard D’Harcourt, Hélène-Frédérique de Faye-Jozin, Gabrielle Ferrari, Augusta Mary Anne Holmès
Performer: Ammiel Bushakevitz, Laetitia Grimaldi
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: BIS
Catalogue: BIS2546
Release: 2022
Size: 1.03 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Bonis: Invocation, Op. Posth. 5
02. Bonis: Élève-toi mon âme, Op. 22
Bonis: 3 Mélodies, Op. Posth. 91
03. No. 3, Guidé par de beaux yeux candides
04. Bonis: Un soir, Op. Posth. 77
05. Bonis: Ave Maria, Op. Posth. 176
06. Chaminade: Villanelle for Voice & Piano
07. Chaminade: L’Anneau d’argent
Chaminade: Mélodies, Recueil 1
08. No. 12, Nice-la-belle
09. Polignac: Chant d’amour
10. Polignac: Jardin du roi
11. Polignac: Ne me regarde pas
12. Folville: Songe
Viardot: 12 Mélodies sur des Poésies Russes
13. No. 3, Les ombres de minuit, VWV 1039
14. No. 7, Les deux roses, VWV 1055
Viardot: 6 Mélodies et une Havanaise variée à 2 voix
15. No. 4, Haï luli, VWV 1106
Viardot: 12 Poems by Pushkin, Fet & Turgenev
16. No. 12, Les étoiles, VWV 1059
D’Harcourt: La partenza
17. No. 1, Le rêve de la vallée
18. Faye-Jozin: Printemps
19. Ferrari: Chanson d’exil
Holmès: 20 Mélodies
20. No. 5, C’est un oiseau du bois sauvage
21. No. 14, Les lavandières
22. Holmès: À Trianon
Devised by Laetitia Grimaldi and Ammiel Bushakevitz, “Ombres” brings together songs by nine women composers whose lives span the years 1821-1964. Many of the songs were written during the so-called “Belle Époque”, at a time when women might be accepted as performers – especially in domestic settings – but struggled to be recognised as composers. And even in the cases when their music was heard – for instance in the fashionable salons of Paris – or published, it soon fell into oblivion. Several of the songs included here were discovered by Grimaldi and Bushakevitz in libraries and archives, having gone out of print long ago.
With “Ombres”, the performers liberate the nine composers from their shadowy existence, and demonstrate the wide range of their music, from Cécile Chaminade’s bustling Villanelle to Pauline Viardot’s nocturnal Les étoiles or the ghostly Les lavandières by Augusta Holmès, about the Midnight Washerwomen from Celtic mythology.