Rita Strohl: Musique vocale, Vol. 1 - Une compositrice de la démesure in Bloomington, MN

The rediscovery of music by female composers came a bit later to France than it did to Britain or the U.S., but the new label
La Boîte à Pépites
is changing that with a series of generous releases illustrated by nifty drawings of the composers. The label does a real service here with this double-album revival of vocal music by
Rita Strohl
(songs, plus a fascinating set for narrator and piano), who lived from 1865 to 1941. It is hard to understand the neglect of her music, which was praised by
Henri Duparc
and programmed by
Pablo Casals
in its own time. In these songs, it is a bit hard to hear the "
compositrice de la démesure
" ("
composer of excess
") promised by the album's subtitle; perhaps that is still to come in the label's series, but
Strohl
did expand upon her models --
Franck
, with some
Wagner
and
Debussy
-- in striking ways. Perhaps the best-known
work so far is the uniquely dramatic and programmatic cello sonata called
Titus et Bérenice
, presumably still to come from
. However, the songs here are hefty in their ambition and reach, sounding in no way derivative of anybody else.
offers her own set of
Pierre Louÿs
' lesbian
Songs of Bilitis
that could easily be programmed with
's
set of three
. The second disc in the set is devoted mostly to settings of
Baudelaire
and other poets; the two cycles, written in 1891 and 1894, would have been received as entirely contemporary in their time. Most interesting of all is the set of narrations, titled
Quand la flûte de Pan
; they have Symbolist texts by the little-known
Marie de Courpon
, who was also a composer, and the relationship between text and music is fluid. The performances are by major artists, including the soprano
Elsa Dreisig
and baritone
Stéphane Degout
, which bodes well for the future of a series that has started promisingly indeed. ~ James Manheim