Lili Boulanger - Psaumes 24, 129 & 130 (Mark Stringer)

Information

Composer: Lili Boulanger

1. Psaume 24
2. Pour les funérailles d'un soldat
3. Psaume 129
4. D'un soir triste
5. D'un matin de printemps
6. Psaume 130 "Du fond de l'abîme"
7. Vieille prière bouddhique

Sonia de Beaufort, mezzo-soprano (6)
Martial Defontaine, tenor (1, 6 & 7)
Vincent Le Texier, baritone (2)
Chœur Symphonique de Namur (1-3, 6 & 7)
Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg
Mark Stringer, conductor

Date: 1998/2007
Label: Timpani
http://www.timpani-records.com/1c1046.php

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Review

The name of the remarkable teacher and conductor Nadia Boulanger is famous throughout the musical world, but her sister Lili (six years younger), phenomenally gifted – she was the first woman to win the Premier Prix de Rome (while Nadia had attained only a Second Prix) – showed promise of at least equal distinction. Always of delicate health, her death at the early age of 24 was a tragedy for music. Apart from works written in her early teens, which she later destroyed, her composing career lasted a mere seven years; but the quality of these compositions from that time is arresting. In 1992 EMI reissued some old recordings of some of them, unfortunately in indifferent performances and shallow sound, and without supplying texts for the vocal works; so the present disc, which triumphantly reverses these drawbacks, is all the more welcome.

Except for parts of D’un matin du printemps (originally for violin and piano, and orchestrated only two months before her death), a grave, even sombre air permeates her works, which are heavily tinged with modal thinking. Her idiom is strong, with a bold harmonic sense and an individual feeling for scoring (her stirring Psalm 24, for example, has the unusual combination of brass, timpani, harp and organ with the male voices): the beatific ending of Psalm 129 is heart-easing after the earlier harshness of ‘Hard as they have harried me, they have not overcome me’ (words significantly applicable to her own determined spirit). Her choral works are comparable to the best of Roussel or Honegger, but her Psalm 130 (dedicated to her father’s memory), with its exotic scale and chromaticisms, has more affinity with Bloch and is, without much doubt, a masterpiece. A disc not to be missed.

-- Lionel Salter, Gramophone

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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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Mark Stringer (born 1964) is an American conductor. Stringer used to take music lessons at the Juilliard School, Tanglewood Music Center and Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute with Seiji Ozawa, Simon Rattle, Michael Tilson Thomas and Leonard Bernstein. His conducting career began in 1989 when he was invited by Bernstein on two European tours. Stringer came to international attention with his sensational debut at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels in 1996. In 2004 Mark Stringer was appointed as Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

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

http://www.markstringer.com/

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