This little disc by American tenor-and-piano duo of Daniel Weeks and Naomi Oliphant claims to include "art songs by the first important Twentieth Century women composers from the Czech Republic, Poland, [the] United States, and France." There are several problems with this conceptually -- there was no Czech Republic in the time of Vitezslava Kaprálová, Cécile Chaminade arguably preceded Lili Boulanger as an important female composer from France and was active well into the 20th century, and the Three Browning Songs, Op. 44, ...
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This little disc by American tenor-and-piano duo of Daniel Weeks and Naomi Oliphant claims to include "art songs by the first important Twentieth Century women composers from the Czech Republic, Poland, [the] United States, and France." There are several problems with this conceptually -- there was no Czech Republic in the time of Vitezslava Kaprálová, Cécile Chaminade arguably preceded Lili Boulanger as an important female composer from France and was active well into the 20th century, and the Three Browning Songs, Op. 44, by Amy Beach are an odd fit stylistically with the rest of the program. This said, the quality of both the music and the performances here is high, and this release will find a place in good collections of music by women. The 13-song cycle Clairières dans le ciel by Lili Boulanger, younger sister to the famed teacher Nadia Boulanger, to a set of hazily evocative prose poems by the French Symbolist writer Francis Jammes, may be the highlight. As Oliphant points out in her notes...
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