Veronique Gens - Desmarets & Campra: Iphigenie en Tauride - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

After a 'spellbinding' album for Alpha devoted to her American roots (Alpha1071), pianist Claire Huangci now celebrates female composers, acknowledging 'The realities these women faced are difficult to imagine for any modern woman in the field.' Clara Wieck (who became Schumann after her marriage to Robert in 1840) was a mother of eight and the main breadwinner, constantly on tour. Fanny Hensel composed largely in private. Often publishing under her brother's name. Amy Beach's career was practically silenced during her marriage; only upon her husband's death did she return to the stage. Florence Price faced both racial and gender discrimination and later raised two children alone. Across the centuries, the voices of these women reach us thanks to musicians like Claire 'In their music, we don't just hear history. We hear transformation. Heroines is my way of listening back-and adding my voice to theirs.'

Véronique Gens - Agrippina [COMPACT DISCS] date 04/27/2004

Abundant though it is, César Franck's vocal music (operas, sacred music, oratorios, mélodies) does not occupy a prominent place in the current repertory. His instrumental compositions - headed by the Violin Sonata in A major and followed by the organ works - represent virtually all that today's audiences and musicians know of his output. Yet the mélodies and vocal duets, neglected by performers and publishers alike, deserve to be plucked from oblivion, both for their own sake and for their place in the history of French music. The alluring voices of Tassis Christoyannis and Véronique Gens immerse the listener in the atmosphere of the nineteenth-century Parisian salons and the mélodies performed there. The composer and organist César Franck, famed for his instrumental music, proves himself equally skilled in setting poems by Musset, Hugo, Chateaubriand, Daudet and Dumas. This first complete recording of his works for voice and piano ranges over his entire creative life.