Cécile Chaminade: Valse tendre,

Here’s a compilation of many Chaminade pieces that I have played on this channel. She was a french composer and concert pianist (1857-1944). Chaminade experimented in composition as a young child, composing pieces for her cats, dogs and dolls. In 1869, she performed some of her music for Georges Bizet, who was impressed with her talents. In 1878, Chaminade gave a salon performance under the auspices of her professor, Le Couppey, consisting entirely of her compositions. This performance marked the beginning of her emergence as a composer and became the archetype for the concerts she gave for the rest of her career in which she only performed her own works.  Her Concertino, Op. 107, is an important work in the flute repertoire. During the 1870s and 1880s several of her works were programmed by the prestigious Société nationale de musique. She toured France several times in her early years. In 1892, she debuted in England, where her work was popular. Isidor Philipp, head of the piano department at the Conservatoire de Paris, championed her works. Chaminade married a music publisher from Marseille, Louis-Mathieu Carbonel, in 1901. Due to his advanced age, this was rumored to be a convenience and Chaminade prescribed strict marriage conditions - they were to live separately, Carbonel in Marseille, and she near Paris, and their marriage was to remain platonic. Carbonel died in 1907 from a lung disease. Chaminade never remarried. In 1908, she performed concerts in twelve cities in the United compositions were tremendous favorites with the American public, and such pieces as the Scarf Dance or the Ballet No. 1 were to be found in the music libraries of many lovers of piano music of the time. She composed a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, the ballet music to Callirhoé and other orchestral works. Her songs, such as The Silver Ring and Ritournelle, were also great favorites. Ambroise Thomas once said of Chaminade: “This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman.“ In 1913, she was elected a Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour (French: Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur), a first for a female composer. In London in November 1901, she made gramophone recordings of seven of her compositions for the Gramophone and Typewriter Company; these are among the most sought-after piano recordings by collectors, though they have been reissued on compact disk. Before and after World War I, Chaminade recorded many piano rolls, but as she grew older, she composed less and less, dying in Monte Carlo on 13 April 1944, where she was first buried. Chaminade’s sister married Moritz Moszkowski, also a well-known composer and pianist like Cécile. Chaminade affiliated herself with nationalist composers such as Camille Saint-Saëns and Charles Gounod. Her musical style was rooted in both Romantic and French tradition throughout her career and her music has been described as tuneful, highly accessible and mildly chromatic. In describing her own style, Chaminade wrote, “I am essentially of the Romantic school, as all my work shows.“ I’m not 100% happy with the performance, but it is admittedly pretty difficult to find the perfect balance between following the score very closely and giving the piece life and joy, and to have fun while playing. As you might know by now, if it’s hard for me to find the balance, I rather tend to the latter. I can for sure say that I had a lot of fun playing this though. I can feel her creativity most of the time while playing her music; the impetous character and abrupt scenery changes, she was probably a very energetic and lively woman. Her music is accesible because her harmonic progressions are often very easy to understand, but because of the high (sometimes really extremely high) tempo of the pieces, it feels like a very quick dance and the phrases blend together very nicely. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - A method to find scores: - My donation link to keep the channel growing: Thanks for listening :-)