Manon Galy, Léa Hennino, Héloïse Luzzati: Une Quête d’Infini

The Strad Issue: December 2025

Description: Another persuasive rediscovery from an imaginative label

Musicians: Manon Galy (violin) Léa Hennino (viola) Héloïse Luzzati (cello) Célia Oneto Bensaïd (piano)

Works: Jaëll: Piano Quartet; Dans un rêve; Romance; Ballade

Catalogue number: LA BOÎTE À PÉPITES BAP12

It’s a strong start in every regard to this latest instalment from cellist Héloïse Luzzati’s label championing lost works by women. The Piano Quartet of 1875 by Marie Jaëll (1846–1925) may be the only piece here not receiving its premiere recording, but its tensely crescendo-ing opening statements and ensuing collision of bold, contrasting ideas (shades of Schumann and Liszt, but entirely Jaëll’s own) make it the perfect curtain-raiser. To it, Luzzati and her colleagues bring spirited and polished playing, with a sure grip on its rhythmic and structural architecture, caught in a natural, well-balanced recording.

Alsatian-born Jaëll (née Trautmann) was an acclaimed touring piano virtuoso who came to composition late, but then studied with Franck and Saint-Saëns. Of the premieres here, the most substantial is the 1886 Ballade for violin and piano. Opening with a Lisztian, darkly angular piano introduction (Jaëll was both an admirer and a committed interpreter of his music), this 13-minute improvisatory-sounding drama makes for an engrossing listen in the hands of Manon Galy and Célia Oneto Bensaïd.

Dans un rêve (c.1881) may be a three-movement piano trio, but it’s under eight minutes long, and sounds deliciously like fairy music in this reading. The 1882 Romance for violin and piano is then just that – and gorgeously so. Altogether, a thoroughly convincing new lease of life for these works.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER