Essential Chaminade
A favourite of Queen Victoria, a guest of the Roosevelts at the White House, admired by Franz Liszt and Georges Bizet, and a musical star in Europe and the US. French pianist and composer Cécile Chaminade (1847–1944) performed her own compositions to packed concert halls and rave reviews.
Read more…Her music enjoyed great popularity during her lifetime, and she performed widely, praised for her fine technique and virtuosity, and even established her own 'Chaminade Clubs' to invite people to enjoy her compositions. Chaminade has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in recent years, yet when she died, despite having published over 400 pieces during her lifetime, her work was regarded as nothing more than superficial salon music, out of fashion and unplayed.
Her oeuvre, however, embraces a variety of forms, from orchestral and ensemble works to piano miniatures and songs, and her music is tuneful, lyrical and romantic, replete with long-spun cantabile melodies, languid phrasing and an impressive command of musical architecture, harmonic interest, rhythm and texture. Unaffected by more progressive composers such as Richard Wagner or the Impressionists, Chaminade remained true to the French romantic style of the 19th century. Whimsical, witty and imbued with joie de vivre, her attractive characterful music has an emotional directness and insouciant elegance which is hard to resist.
'This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman.' – Ambroise Thomas