Marcelle de Manziarly: Chamber Works

A significant number of women were active as professional composers in inter-war France. Although they worked alongside their male peers and were accepted by concert organisers, performers, critics and audiences alike, they are little known today, and their works are rarely performed in concert or recorded. 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 large and varied œuvre spans virtually the whole of the 20th century and reflects her constant stylistic evolution and transformation. This recording, which contains a number of discographic premières, brings together works composed at different points in her long career, from the Violin Sonata, an early work that already shows exceptional maturity with its harmonies typical of French music at the turn of the century, to the Trilogue with its dissonances and minimalism. Performed by first-rate chamber musicians, these works demonstrate that it is high time to rediscover Marcelle de Manziarly.