Hailed by the magazine BBC Music for it's 'generous and warm-hearted, utterly beguiling playing', the GRAMMY�-nominated Neave Trio has emerged as one of the finest young ensembles of it's generation. For this, their eighth album, they have once again selected a programme of works by female composers. Written in 1846, the Piano Trio of Clara Schumann was considered a great success by her friends and supporters (notably by Brahms) but her lack of self-confidence clouded her own view of the piece. Intellectually curious and a voracious reader from an early age, Dora Pejacevic was largely self-taught as a composer. She composed her first piano trio (in D major) in 1905 (when she was twenty) and the second followed in 1910, by which time Pejacevic's musical language had already evolved into it's distinctive late-romantic style. Chaminade's Piano Trio No. 2 in A minor was published 1887, with a dedication to the great French cellist Jules Delsart. The successful premiere had been given at the Salle �rard on 4 February 1886. Chaminade went on to play the A minor Trio regularly during the 1890s, to substantial critical acclaim.

On 9 January 2026, conductor Shea Lolin presents Frisson, an exciting new album of music for woodwind orchestra and his third recording with the principal woodwind players of the Czech Philharmonic (Gramophone's Orchestra of the Year 2024). Frisson follows the release of the ground-breaking Twisted Skyscape, the first album devoted entirely to new music for woodwind orchestra, and Chromosphere, which focused on contemporary repertoire. Frisson marks Shea Lolin's 20-year involvement with the woodwind orchestra and celebrates it's evolution from the early eighteenth-century genre of Harmoniemusik - formal ensemble music for pairs of winds - to it's modern form. The album features a superb programme of arrangements for woodwind orchestra by Shea Lolin, all originally commissioned by the Bloomsbury Woodwind Ensemble. He expands Franz Krommer's exquisite Octet - Partita in F Major, Op. 57, and Richard Strauss's youthful Serenade, Op. 7, creating a broader sonic landscape while maintaining their essence. Also included is C�cile Chaminade's beloved Concertino, Op. 107, arranged for woodwind orchestra and featuring young Glaswegian flautist Fiona Sweeney, who makes her debut with the Czech Philharmonic on this release. Completing the album is More Gordian Knots by Guy Woolfenden OBE, a spirited reimagining of Purcell's music for The Gordian Knot Unty'd, written during Woolfenden's remarkable 40-year association with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

This album, Throwback to Dance, explores how composers turn to dance forms to carve out new paths: predominantly court dances, folk dances but also the more 'modern' waltz. The album is inspired by the charming meeting between Ravel and Grieg back in 1894, and looks at Grieg's influence on Ravel, seldom documented, as well as that on Pejacevic and Chaminade.

The recent 'discovery' of the music of Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) belies the fact that in the early years of the 20th century she was immensely popular, touring both Europe and the US as a pianist, exclusively in her own music. Changing fashions brought an abrupt end to this fame, but in the first thirty years of recording, over 80 discs of her piano music alone were released. Her own discs from 1901, presented complete here, are some of the earliest by a classical pianist. Many of her most popular pieces were recorded multiple times, but this set presents chronologically at least one version of every work recorded on 78s and introduces as many different pianists as practical.

Ukrainian-American pianist Anna Shelest continues her exploration of works by women composers in Donna Voce Volume 3 - Clara Schumann & Cecile Chaminade: Concerti & Piano Works. Featured are Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7 and Cecile Chaminade's Concertstuck for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 40 with Neeme Jarvi conducting the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. Anna Shelest also performs works for solo piano by each composer and is joined by her husband Dmitri Shelest in Chaminade's Pieces Romantiques, Op. 55 for piano four hands. Featuring Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 7 and Cecile Chaminade's Concertstuck for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 40 with Neeme Jarvi conducting the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. Anna Shelest also performs works for solo piano by each composer and is joined by her husband Dmitri Shelest in Chaminade's Pieces Romantiques, Op. 55 for piano four hands.

“Après un rêve” is an ode to the French Belle Époque repertoire, depicting the beauty of dreams and the night. The album is an opportunity to hear and perhaps discover rarely played / rarely recorded wonderful works (Chaminade Nocturne, Duparc Aux étoiles, Poulenc Les soirées de Nazelles), alongside central pillars of the repertoire, and includes a world premiere of Despax’s arrangement of Après un rêve. The album is attributed to his grandfather, Jacques Charpentreau, a French poet who adored this repertoire and frequently drew inspiration from the night in his works. Despax has curated some of his poetry, as well as works by other poets he admired to complement this music, taking the listener on an immersive poetic and musical journey through this noctur- nal landscape.

REVIEW:

Despax has recorded Bach, Brahms, Chopin, but the works here particularly suit his sensibility. In Maurice Ravel’s haunting masterpiece Gaspard de la Nuit, he masters the ferocious challenges with ease, delicacy, strength.

-- The Guardian (UK)

Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) was a highly successful female pianist and composer. As a pianist she toured the European countries, in 1892 making her debut in England, making acquaintance with one of her biggest fans, Queen Victoria. In 1908 she made her American debut, gaining instant and immense popularity. The reason for Chaminade’s popularity is the charm, tunefulness and general accessibility of her music. It touches a ready chord with every music lover, and the fancy titles and not overly virtuosic piano writing made that her works became drawing room favorites of the epoch.

For his second Chaminade album British pianist Mark Viner chose the Six Concert Studies, substantial and demanding works, Six Pièces humoristiques Op. 87, and some engaging and attractive character pieces: L’Ondine, Danse Créole and the favorite Lolita, Caprice Espagnol, all played with Viner’s unerring feeling for the witty and charming style, pouring out sentiment without being sentimental. Gramophone wrote about Viner’s first Chaminade album: “This new survey must count among the finest yet, showing the range and ambition of Chaminade in short works, played with an innate charm and understanding of the genre. In addition, it is most beautifully recorded. Mark Viner is recognized as one of the foremost British pianists, a strong advocate of lesser-known romantic piano music. One of his most ambitious and successful enterprises is the recording of the complete piano music by Charles-Valentin Alkan, now at volume 5, several of which issues received the highest praise in the press (5 star review, Gramophone Editor’s Choice).

REVIEW:

Cécile Chaminade’s well crafted, idiomatic, communicative, and utterly charming solo piano works are more and more finding their way to disc. I’m not certain if Mark Viner’s second Piano Classics release devoted to this composer signifies a complete cycle in the works, yet his robust virtuosity and overall dynamism vibrantly elevate this repertoire from the salon to the stage.

L’Ondine’s pearly runs, for example, tellingly contrast to the full-bodied chordal climaxes, while Viner makes more of Au pays dévasté’s brooding countenance than others. He brings a probing deliberation and almost tragic spin to the familiar Autrefois from the 6 Pièces humoristiques Op. 87 in a reading that radically differs from Joanne Polk’s fleeting, cameo-like treatment. Viner’s quickly flickering left-hand arpeggios in Guitare lilt in a manner that evokes Chaminade’s piano roll interpretation. If Polk’s Etude romantique Op. 132 is crisper and more incisively articulated than Viner’s, his Etude symphonique Op. 28 conveys greater textural depth, while the Etude scholastique Op. 139’s tarantella-like figurations effortlessly click their heels. Viner’s detailed and insightful annotations flesh out this most welcome release.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Classical Music

Devised by Laetitia Grimaldi and Ammiel Bushakevitz, Ombres brings together songs by nine women composers whose lives span the years 1821–1964. Many of the songs were written during the so-called Belle Époque, at a time when women might be accepted as performers – especially in domestic settings – but struggled to be recognised as composers. And even in the cases when their music was heard – for instance in the fashionable salons of Paris – or published, it soon fell into oblivion. Several of the songs included here were discovered by Grimaldi and Bushakevitz in libraries and archives, having gone out of print long ago. With Ombres, the performers liberate the nine composers from their shadowy existence, and demonstrate the wide range of their music, from Cécile Chaminade’s bustling Villanelle to Pauline Viardot’s nocturnal Les étoiles or the ghostly Les lavandières by Augusta Holmès, about the Midnight Washerwomen from Celtic mythology.

REVIEW:

What is beyond question is that some of the songs by the two most well-known of these composers, Pauline Viardot and Cécile Chaminade, are quite wonderful. Viardot wrote some real gems. The melody of “Les ombres de minuit” (The shadows of midnight) is haunting, the atmosphere of “Les deux roses” (The two roses) truly perfumed, the refrain of “Haï luli” folk-like and unforgettable, and the unquestionable beauty of “Les étoiles” (The stars) a gift to savor.

Chaminade's three songs, all characteristically La Belle Époque, include a lovely “Villanelle” which shines best when sung in a voice filled with youth and sunlight. “L’anneau d’argent” (The silver ring) is meant to elicit smiles, and “Nice-la-belle” (Beautiful Nice) is the French equivalent of the romance of the New York skyline as viewed from the Staten Island Ferry in a black-and-white movie from the ’30s or ’40s.

Be sure to listen to de Polignac’s hauntingly beautiful, far from ordinary “Jardin du roi” (The king’s garden). There are plenty of surprise turns in her songs to engage on multiple levels. And enjoy how Holmès, the daughter of an Irish major who was educated at Versailles, set her own poetry.

-- San Francisco Classical Voice (Jason Victor Serinus)