Who’s Afraid Of …?
Boulanger Trio
rec. 2023/24, Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal, Berlin
Reviewed as lossless download
Berlin Classics 0303298BC [78]
The title of this release is presumably a reference to the Edward Albee play “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, but according to the booklet notes relating what Virginia Woolf “knew”, the real title is “Who’s Afraid of Creative Women?”. I’m not entirely convinced that women composers, of whatever era, still need special pleading. But this is a music review, and I’m certainly not interested or qualified to undertake a debate on the current state of sexual politics.
The programme includes works (all by women composers, as you will have gathered) from the early 1600s through to 2022. Only three works – the Andrée and Mendelssohn-Hensel trios and the Auerbach – were written specifically for the piano trio, the others were originally songs (the booklet notes don’t indicate who did the arrangements). In making this “creative space” (i.e. the recording), the Boulanger Trio has tried very hard, perhaps a little too much so, to include as wide a spectrum of women composer/performers as possible. Unfortunately, the mix of styles just doesn’t work for me, and the order doesn’t help. Going from Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel’s fine Romantic trio to Lera Auerbach’s austere piece and then to Kate Bush’s second best-known song is an uncomfortable rollercoaster ride (as is the sequence of two early baroque arias flanking a 2022 Eurovision song). In general, classical arrangements of pop songs tend to sound good for the first minute or so, and then become repetitive, and the examples here are no exception. The three songs taken from Lili Boulanger’s song cycle demonstrate the strength of her voice, but without knowing them in their original form, I suspect the arrangements have homogenised them somewhat.
None of these reservations as to the programming extends to the playing. I reviewed a 2016 Boulanger Trio release, a collection titled Solitaires, and was very impressed by their playing (and rather more by the choice of music), and the performances on Who’s Afraid Of…? are very good. The Mendelssohn-Hensel is one of the best renditions I’ve heard, and the Andrée, of which I was fairly dismissive in my Piano Trio survey, is shown to have a little more going for it than its only other recording (Trio Nordica/Intim Musik) had suggested. The recording quality is good, and the booklet notes fairly informative, though they certainly push the agenda pretty hard.
In attempting to make a point about women composers from across a span of 400 years, the net result is too much of a hodge-podge of styles and arrangements that don’t quite work to be rescued by the fine playing.
I should point out that the contents list below is that for the download/streaming version (which is what I had). The physical CD is missing the Kate Bush and Rosa Lynn pieces, and is ordered slightly differently.
David Barker
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Contents
Elfrida Andrée (1841-1929)
Trio no. 2 in G minor
Maria Theresia Paradis (1759-1824)
Erinnerung ans Schicksal
Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel (1805-1847)
Trio in D minor op. 11
Lera Auerbach (b. 1973)
Postscriptum
Kate Bush (b. 1958)
Running Up That Hill *
Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)
Clairières dans le ciel
Vittoria Aleotti (1575-1646)
Io v’amo vita mia
Rosa Lynn
Snap *
Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677)
Che si può fare?
Alicia Keys (b. 1981)
Fallin’
Barbara (Monique Andrée Serf, 1930-1997)
Göttingen
* Download/streaming only
