Farrenc: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3

Album review

There are far too few recordings of the stunning symphonies of Louise Farrenc (1804-1875), who was a near-contemporary of Berlioz. Farrenc was better-known as a teacher of piano at the Paris Conservatory from 1842 to 1875 than as a composer, but she has an impressive body of work behind her, covering chamber music, piano pieces and three symphonies. To be sure, the fact of being a woman in an era when women composers were thought of as pleasant oddities and more decorative than serious, can't have helped the distribution of her music, even though her symphonies were performed in Paris during her lifetime. Moreover, she didn't write operas, in a time when every composer who wanted to get along had to make a sally into the lyrical sphere one way or another. The Second and Third Symphonies, of 1845 and 1847 respectively, display Farrenc's clear reverence for her German contemporaries Mendelssohn and Schumann, but a certain French je-ne-sais-quoi still shines through her writing in its elegance and orchestration. Do not miss these two masterpieces from a major artist of early French romanticism. © SM/Qobuz