Caturelli, Maria / Livia Tancioni / Livia De Romanis / Michele Tozzeti
Louise Farrenc: Chamber Music
French female composer Louise Farrenc came from august artistic lineages: her family could boast a series of great sculptors who followed each other from mid-seventeenth century to the Romantic era, and, musically, her teachers were among the leading musicians of the time. Having married a music publisher, she embarked on a career as a concert pianist, piano teacher (the first female professor of piano at the Conservatoire of Paris), and composer, whose abundant output includes three symphonies and other orchestral works, along with many important pieces of chamber music. The two Trios recorded here combine a woodwind instrument (flute and clarinet respectively) with cello and piano; they display the brilliant imagination of their composer, and her rootedness in the Classical and early Romantic tradition of the German school. These works are complemented by two shorter pieces for solo piano, whose elegance, brilliancy, and expressivity bear witness to Farrencs undisputed genius.