Lili Boulanger; Nadia Boulanger - In Memoriam Lili Boulanger (Emile Naoumoff)

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Composer: Lili Boulanger; Nadia Boulanger; Emile Naoumoff

1. Boulanger - Thème et variations, for piano
2. Boulanger - D'un matin de printemps, for violin & piano
3. Boulanger - Nocturne, for violin & piano
4. Boulanger - Cortège, for violin & piano
5. Boulanger - Clairières dans le ciel, cycle of 13 songs for voice and piano (after poems of Francis Jammes): Elle était descendue
6. Boulanger - Clairières dans le ciel, cycle of 13 songs for voice and piano (after poems of Francis Jammes): Si tout ceci
7. Boulanger - Clairières dans le ciel, cycle of 13 songs for voice and piano (after poems of Francis Jammes): Nous nous aimerons
8. Boulanger - Clairières dans le ciel, cycle of 13 songs for voice and piano (after poems of Francis Jammes): Demain, fera un an
9. Boulanger - D'un vieux jardin, for piano
10. Boulanger - D'un jardin clair, for piano
11. Boulanger - Dans l'immense tristesse (text by Bertha Galeron Calonne), for voice and piano
12. Boulanger - Le retour (text by Georges Delaquys), for voice and piano
13. Boulanger - Pie Jesu, for voice, string quartet, harp & organ
14. N. Boulanger - Lux aeterna, for voice, violin, cello & harp
15. N. Boulanger - Piece for cello & piano in E flat minor
16. N. Boulanger - Piece for cello & piano in C sharp minor
17. N. Boulanger - Le couteau, for voice & piano
18. N. Boulanger - Vers la vie nouvelle, for piano
19. Naoumoff - In memoriam Lili Boulanger, for piano & bassoon

Isabelle Sabrié & Sylvie Robert, soprano
Doris Reinhardt, mezzo-soprano
Catherine Marchese, bassoon
Olivier Charlier, violin
Roland Pidoux, cello
Emile Naoumoff, piano

Date: 1993
Label: Naxos
http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.223636

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Review

Not a really representative homage to Lili Boulanger, despite obvious affection and the best intentions. The most striking piece here is a curiously delayed discovery: the Theme et Variations, listed in several sources as unfinished but proved to be complete as long ago as 1978 by Leonie Rosenstiel in her book on the composer. At last a first recording; was Lili's devoted sister Nadia not convinced of its value (Rosenstiel found the complete manuscript but was not allowed to examine it in detail)? If so she was wrong: it is entirely characteristic of the frail Lili's best work in its strength and its bigness of gesture. The keyboard language, perhaps, is not wholly 'mature' (if one can use that word of a 20-year-old composer who died at 24), but it is individual even in its derivativeness: at times it sounds like Faure, yes, but more often like Faure's older, tougher brother. Much of it is dark, bare and austere, even its most pianistic gestures are boldly firm.

Anyone familiar with Boulanger's work will, even so, already be objecting to my description of the Variations as the most striking piece here: that title surely belongs to the remarkable cycle Clairieres dans le ciel (''Clearings in the sky'')? It would, were the cycle recorded complete (only four of its 13 songs are included) and were it performed more strongly. Isabelle Sabrie has a pretty but smallish, rather pale voice, and commendably hard though she works at the long lines of the tragic final song it needs a bigger voice and ampler gesture. The two other impressive songs are also given competent, small-scale performances, but Lili Boulanger at her best was not a small-scale composer. The two elegant piano pieces go well, though, as do the three violin miniatures.

Nadia Boulanger gave up composing almost entirely when she realized that her younger sister was so much more talented. Vers la vie nouvelle (''Towards a new life''), written in the aftermath of Lili's death, is moving in its grief and its resolve to surmount grief; more movingly still it quite recalls Lili in the bleak vehemence of its opening pages. The solitary song of Nadia's recorded here is sung so badly that it's hard to judge its quality; her two cello pieces would make pleasing encores. Her brief, sweet Lux aeterna is placed alongside Lili's rapt Pie Jesu (dictated on her deathbed), as it is annually during a memorial Mass to commemorate the long-separated sisters; the conjunction is touching, and the performances have a not wholly inappropriate hint of the home-spun about them. Emile Naoumoff, the guiding spirit behind this enterprise, was Nadia Boulanger's last pupil. His own little tribute to Lili is awkwardly well-meant, but his playing of her Variations is a more affecting homage. The recordings are adequate, but not very atmospheric.

-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/BOULANGER-Lili-Nadia-Memoriam-Boulanger/dp/B000004620

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Lili Boulanger (21 August 1893 – 15 March 1918) was a French composer, the younger sister of the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. She was a child prodigy and studied with Gabriel Fauré and Louis Vierne among others. In 1913, at the age of 19, she became the first woman composer to win the Prix de Rome composition prize for her cantata 'Faust et Hélène'. Her work was noted for its colorful harmony and instrumentation and skillful text setting. Her life was troubled by chronic illness, leading to the "intestinal tuberculosis" (Crohn's disease) that cut short at the early age of 24.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Boulanger

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Nadia Boulanger (16 September 1887 – 22 October 1979) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. She is notable for having taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century. She also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist. Among her students were those who became leading composers, soloists, arrangers and conductors, including Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Quincy Jones, John Eliot Gardiner, Elliott Carter, Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch, Virgil Thomson, David Diamond, İdil Biret, Daniel Barenboim, Philip Glass and Astor Piazzolla.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Boulanger

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Emile Naoumoff (born February 20, 1962 in Sofia, Bulgaria) is a French pianist and composer. At the age of eight, after a fateful meeting in Paris, he became the last disciple of Nadia Boulanger, who referred to him as "the gift of my old age". He studied with her until her death in late 1979. Naoumoff also pursued studies at the Paris Conservatory and the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris. He is regularly invited by the world's premier orchestras nd has collaborated closely with renowned conductors. Naoumoff has received numerous awards, including the Médaille d'honneur de Paris.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Naoumoff

http://www.emilenaoumoff.com/

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