Boulanger Trio: Who’s Afraid Of …?

The Strad Issue: March 2025

Description: Plenty to intrigue in this thoughtfully programmed album

Musicians: Boulanger Trio

Works: Music by Aleotti, Andrée, Auerbach, Barbara, Boulanger, Bush, Keys, Linn, Mendelssohn, Paradis and Strozzi

Catalogue number: BERLIN CLASSICS 0303298BC

A celebration of women fulfilling their potential through nine female composers whose collective lives span a period of 450 years: nothing new, you might think, in an all-female-composed programme. Yet Germany’s Boulanger Trio does peel off from the pack at a programming level, because while this collection of original and newly arranged works features names you might expect, there are also lesser-knowns, and enterprising trips down pop as well as classical routes.

Gothenburg Cathedral organist Elfrida Andrée (1841–1929) has been done proud, her lyrical, compelling Trio no.2 in G minor receiving a feisty, graceful and portamento-rich treatment that rings attractively around the recording space. Erinnerung ans Schicksal by blind touring pianist–composer Maria Theresia von Paradis (1759–1824) is less successful – unmemorable salon wallpaper, proving not every rehabilitated female composer is a wrongly overlooked compositional genius.

Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill develops satisfyingly from dreamy, time-suspended fortitude to rhythmically pulsing power – a nice set-up for the sensuous Impressionist textures and harmonic colours of the following arrangements from Lili Boulanger’s song-cycle, Clairières dans le ciel. Occasionally I found myself wanting more fluid freedom in the lines, and the violin overshadows the cello in Barbara’s Göttingen. But there is plenty to enjoy in this stylistic cornucopia.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER