Clara Louise

This is not CPO’s first Farrenc recording. The company has already issued a disc of Farrenc symphonies and another of her large-scale chamber works. Those recordings were well received, and I have no doubt that this new solo piano disc will also garner fine reviews. I should also relate that being a pianist, Farrenc’s early compositions consisted primarily of piano music, and that the works on the new disc are from her early career.

Few will have heard of Louise Farrenc (1804-1875). She seems to have spent most of her life in Paris, receiving tuition from Antonin Reicha, Hummel and Moscheles. She wrote a considerable amount of piano and chamber music and was appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire in 1842. Whilst other female composers of the period, such as Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, focused on songs and instrumental works, Farrenc progressed to writing three symphonies and two overtures.

Louise Farrenc was a woman in a man’s world: 19th-century musical Paris. Clara Schumann had previously been the only woman to be praised for her compositions and performances; it was generally considered that to earn money from music was a masculine pursuit. Farrenc not only achieved the near impossible of getting her music published, leading to Robert Schumann’s praise of her work, but was awarded a piano professorship at the Paris Conservatoire. Compositions for piano formed a part of her oeuvre, alongside works for chamber ensemble and orchestra. These pieces gradually fell out of the repertoire and only began to be revisited towards the end of the 20th century.