de Manziarly: Chamber Works (SACD)

A considerable number of women were active as professional composers in France between the wars. Although they collaborated with their male colleagues and were accepted by concert organizers, performers, critics and audiences alike, they are little known today and their works are rarely performed or recorded in concert. The composer, conductor, pianist and teacher Marcelle de Manziarly is one of these forgotten musicians. After studying composition with Nadia Boulanger, who became her mentor, and conducting with Felix Weingartner, she pursued a career on both sides of the Atlantic, in France and the United States. Her extensive and varied oeuvre was written practically throughout the 20th century and reflects her constant stylistic development and transformation. This recording, which includes a number of discographic premieres, brings together works written at different points in her long career, from the Violin Sonata, an early work that already shows exceptional maturity with its harmonies typical of turn-of-the-century French music, to the Trilogue with its dissonances and minimalism. Performed by first-class chamber musicians, these works show that it is high time to rediscover Marcelle de Manziarly.