Renée Chemet: Handel, Lalo, Tartini et al

The Strad Issue: December 2025

Description: A stylish French violinist is rediscovered

Musicians: Renée Chemet (violin) Harold Craxton, Marguerite Delcourt, Gerald Moore, Ivor Newton (pianos)

Works: Handel: Violin Sonata in A major op.1 no.3 (Andante and Allegro only). Lalo: Symphonie espagnole (movements 1, 2 and 5); Violin Concerto (Romance only). Tartini: Violin Sonata op.1 no.10 ‘Didone abbandonata’. Tartini: Violin Concerto op.3 no.6 (Largo only); pieces by Chabrier, Drdla, Falla, Fibich, Grovlez, Hummel, Kreisler, Poldini, Saint-Saëns, Simonetti, Weber and Wieniawski

Catalogue number: BIDDULPH 85064-2

Renée Chemet (1887–1977) toured widely from her French base, becoming popular in Japan and the US, before her career tailed off. Her records were made in 1920–32 but radio material exists – a 1947 Lalo sonata is on Meloclassic.

Lalo seems to have been her favourite composer and her warhorse was the Symphonie espagnole. Cut versions of three movements with piano reveal drama and poetry in the first movement, lightness and fluent technique in the second and excellent rhythm in the fifth. The Romance from the F major Concerto displays lovely phrasing.

She catches the melancholy side of Tartini in a cut ‘Didone abbandonata’ Sonata and her double-stops are splendid in one of the best versions of Fibich’s Poème, the melody phrased ‘on the breath’. Drdla’s Souvenir is given a wistful air and Wieniawski’s Polonaise brillante in A major is virtuosic.

It is rare to find genuine Vivaldi at this time and Chemet also beat Adolf Busch by a year in getting Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro down on record. Half of a Handel sonata is very neatly done.

She is not above altering note values, as in Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, but in general her technique is excellent and her tone glows, something we can appreciate on the last eight tracks, electrically recorded – although two or three of the 78rpm discs have been well loved.

There are rather a lot of snippety pieces, but a positive picture of an attractive fiddler emerges. A second CD of Chemet’s Victors is coming; and hopefully it will have room for Mozart’s Rondo, Pierné’s Serenade and Fauré’s Berceuse.

TULLY POTTER