Evocative

Caroline Boissier Butini (1786-1836)

Caroline Boissier-Butini was a Swiss composer & pianist who was a musical household name throughout Switzerland in her day. Although not widely condoned at the time, Caroline was encouraged by her parents and her husband to pursue her musical talents. In the spring of 1818 Caroline measured her musical ability against the best pianists in Paris and London. She played to Marie Bigot, Ferdinand Paër, Friedrich Kalkbrenner and Johann Baptist Cramer, and garnered unfettered praise, both for her own pieces and for her interpretations. It has been shown that she wanted to publish her works through Ignaz Pleyel in Paris, although this was unsuccessful; she did, however, sign a contract with the publisher Leduc.

All of Butini’s compositions (which include seven piano concertos) are housed in her family’s archives at the Bibliothèque de Genève, which is digitizing the entire collection. The works have begun making their way to the public through the Association Caroline Boissier-Butini.

BCMS is grateful to Catherine Rae Sheldon for leading us to the Association when we could not find a contemporary score. We are indebted to Irène Minder-Jeanneret, vice president of the Association, for sending us a free copy of this trio which will only be available for us to purchase next year. The Butini Association is very excited to have this work performed in the USA.

In the composer’s own words:
“I am better than the keyboard players of Paris.”

Read more at The Association Caroline Boissier-Butini.

Carlos Simon (b.1986)

Carlos Simon is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, whose music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and Neo-romanticism. Simon is the Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the inaugural Boston Symphony Orchestra Composer Chair, and Concertgebouw Composer-in-Residence (26/27 season). Simon was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY award for his album Requiem for the Enslaved.

Simon’s “Be Still and Know” for violin, cello, and piano, was inspired by an interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which she quoted:

“I have felt the presence of God my whole life. Even when I didn’t have a name for it, I could feel the voice bigger than myself speaking to me, and all of us have that same voice. Be still and know it. You can acknowledge it or not. You can worship it or not. You can praise it, you can ignore it or you can know it. Know it. It’s always there speaking to you and waiting for you to hear it in every move, in every decision .

-Oprah Winfrey, May 25, 2011

In the composer’s own words:
“I believe it’s that art should reflect life. If the music is sort of holding up a mirror or reflecting what’s out there, then the goal for me in every piece I write, is for someone else find themselves in it.”

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Ravel is widely regarded as one of the most popular French composers of the 20th century made famous for orchestral works such as Bolero and Daphnis et Chloé.  His chamber compositions that include Chansons Madécasses, Piano Trio, String Quartet, Sonata for violin and cello, and Introduction and Allegro – (which we will offer later this season), herald equal fame in the chamber music world.

The Chansons madécasses for mezzo-soprano, flute, cello and piano, was co-commissioned in 1925 by the Library of Congress and by the beloved American music patron, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. In fact, Ravel dedicated this work to Madam Coolidge. It is a set of three exotic art songs that offers a more experimental side of Ravel’s compositional style. The 18th century texts by Évariste de Parny (1753–1814) express sensuousness, anti-colonialist/anti-slavery sentiments, and the simplicity of stillness.

In the composer’s own words:
“The only love affair I have ever had was with music.”

Rita Strohl (1865-1941)

Rita Strohl was a gifted young French pianist who entered the Paris Conservatory as a young teenager. She also studied composition for several years privately with Adrien Barthe, developing her unique artistic voice. She seems to have had a strong independent streak which makes her compositions stand slightly outside the traditions in which she lived. Strohl was a highly respected composer in her time, composing vocal, symphonic and chamber music works. The piano quintet dates from the early in her career and does not follow the prevailing conventions of the period. Though the work is known to have been performed during her lifetime – it was never published. 

BCMS is once again grateful to Catherine Rae Sheldon for leading us to Palazzetto Bru Zane, an institution dedicated to the rediscovery and promotion of French romantic music. They are resurrecting the memory of nineteenth-century French women composers that had been completely ‘lost’ and have edited most of Rita Strohl’s chamber music, offering them for free as part of their mission.  We are thankful to Marie Humbert at Bru Zane for sending us a copy of the Fantaisie-Quintette.