A chamber music evening dedicated to female composers, many of whom helped shape European cultural history and, despite their achievements in the music scene and society, were excluded from the canon and/or were prevented from composing due to their restricted living conditions.
Nadia Boulanger was the "composition teacher of the 20th century". Her students included Aaron Copland, Phillip Glass, Astor Piazzolla, Leonard Bernstein and countless others. Her short "Three Pieces" for cello and piano, which appeared in print in 1915, are close to Impressionism and alternate between tender melancholy and Parisian exuberance.
Since the 1960s, the compositions of Clara Schumann have been rediscovered, including, as recently as 1983, the Three Romances for violin and piano op. 22, which Clara Schumann wrote for the young Joseph Joachim and which today are among her most popular chamber music works.
She became an international celebrity almost overnight: Lili Boulanger, Nadia's younger sister, won the 1913 Prix de Rome competition. She was the first woman to win the highest award, premier grand prix – a sensation. Seriously ill for life, she died early, at the age of 24, but left behind an astonishing number of compositions, including her only piece for cello and piano, "D'un soir triste", written shortly before Boulanger's death. The manuscript remained incomplete, was never published and has been carefully supplemented here with the help of the piano trio version and the orchestral version. A new contribution to the cello/piano repertoire!
She was celebrated by Camille Saint-Saëns, Vincent d'Indy and Gabriel Fauré and Pablo Casals played her music: Rita Strohl. Her retirement from Parisian society to found the mystical symbolist theater "La Grange" meant that most of her works were never published or recorded. This also applies to the Sonata Dramatique "Titus et Bérénice" for cello and piano, a great late-Romantic sonata that also tells a dramatic story, the tragic love story of Titus and Bérénice.
Alternatively, for a more "traditional" program, the first part of the concert can be replaced with the Caesar Franck Sonata!
PROGRAM
Clara Schumann (1819 - 1896): 3 Romances op. 22 (arr. for Cello and Piano)
Nadia Boulanger (1887 - 1979): 3 Pieces for Cello and Piano
Lilli Boulanger (1893 - 1918): D'un soir triste (Version for Cello and Piano)
Rita Strohl: (1865-1941): Sonata Dramatique "Titus et Bérénice" for Cello and Piano
MUSICIANS
Peter Hudler, cello
Adela Liculescu, piano
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