A brand new document label dedicated to releasing music by forgotten ladies composers can be launched this September.
Based by cellist Héloïse Luzzati, La Boîte à Pépites launches on 30 September with its debut album: a 3 CD boxset of the whole works by Charlotte Sohy. This can be adopted, in 2023, with a CD of music by Rita Strohl, with many different ladies within the pipeline, together with the British composers Liza Lehmann, Alice Mary Smith and Adela Maddison.
The document label varieties one a part of the ‘Elles – Ladies Composers’ mission – devised by Luzzati – which started with the creation of the ‘Un Temps pour Elles’ music Pageant in France and was quickly adopted by the YouTube channel ‘La Boîte à Pépites’ which at the moment incorporates greater than 60 movies from animated documentaries to a video creation calendar. The purpose behind all of it, in keeping with Luzzati, is ‘ to exhume items that appeared worthy of an excellent place in the usual musical repertoire’ – a lot of which have by no means been recorded or have been misplaced over time.
The music of Sohy is the proper instance. Born in France in 1887, Sohy was inspired in her creative research by her father. A pupil of the best musicians of her time, similar to Louis Vierne or Vincent d’Indy, she was a good friend of many sensible ladies musicians together with Nadia Boulanger. In 1909, she married Marcel Labey, one other composer, with whom she had seven kids; her rich family allowed her to fulfil her vocation as a composer alongside her duties as a mom. She generally signed her compositions with the title of her grandfather, Charles Sohy, writing lyrical dramas, chamber music and symphonic music: nearly none of her thirty-five works have ever been revealed. An animated YouTube video tells the story of her life.
‘By having the items recorded by a plethora of various artists,’ says Luzzati, ‘my hope is to shift the emphasis of the CDs from the gamers to the composer, and to assist her works to, little by little, come to their correct place within the historical past of classical music.’
