Nadia & Lili Boulanger - The Complete Songs (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Nadia Boulanger; Lili Boulanger

• The Complete Songs (3CDs)

Lucile Richardot, mezzo-soprano

Anne de Fornel, piano

Raquel Camarinha, soprano

Stéphane Degout, baritone

Emmanuelle Bertrand, cello

Sarah Nemtanu, violin

Date: 2023

Label: Harmonia Mundi

https://www.harmoniamundi.com/en/albums/les-heures-claires-integrale-des-melodies/

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Review

Not long after Lili Boulanger died in 1918 aged just 24, her harshly self-critical and grief-stricken sister Nadia stopped composing, declaring she lacked Lili’s talent. Lili may have been more harmonically daring, but both Boulanger sisters could hold their heads high among their peers. This treasure trove of two discs devoted to Nadia and a third to Lili brings together their complete songs periodically punctuated by violin, cello and piano works.

Pianist Anne de Fornel is the impressive constant factor, capturing the refined emotional nuances of these exquisite works, while mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot takes the lion’s share of the 55 songs. Beguiling from her first entry in Nadia’s ‘Mon coeur’, she is convincing throughout, burning with controlled passion in Poeme d’amour, playful in ‘Chanson’ and desolate in ‘Soir d’hiver’. Stéphane Degout is equally mesmerising, joining Richardot for ‘Allons voir sur le lac d’argent’, the only duet and one of several first recordings. Appropriately, Richardot and Degout share the songs of Les heures claires, an unusual cycle in being jointly composed by Nadia and Raoul Pugno.

Sarah Nemtanu is a strong advocate for Lili’s violin pieces, while cellist Emmanuelle Betrand reveals Nadia’s Trois Pieces to be a miniature gem. Sadly, it is hard to warm to Raquel Camarinha’s constricted tone and mannerisms in Clairieres dans le ciel, the most substantial of Lili’s works presented here. There are strong alternatives for this cycle, though, and the rest of this set gives unalloyed pleasure.

-- Christopher Dingle, BBC Music Magazine

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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. Among her students were those who became leading composers, soloists and conductors, including Aaron Copland, John Eliot Gardiner, Elliott Carter, Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch, Virgil Thomson, İdil Biret, Daniel Barenboim, Philip Glass and Astor Piazzolla. Boulanger also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist, and was the first woman to conduct many major orchestras in America and Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Boulanger

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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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