The Flatterer: Piano Music Of Chaminade / Polk

Loading… Joanne Polk, noted pianist and champion of female composers, makes her Steinway label debut with an irresistible collection of Cécile Chaminade’s piano works. Recorded by Grammy-winning producer Steven Epstein, the album celebrates an underrated composer whose music deserves a wide audience. Coming of age in Paris in the second half of the19th c., Chaminade’s major models were Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Bizet and Franck—all renowned composers of serious Romantic music. When she reached her own compositional maturity in the 1880s, she made her first mark writing in genres associated with these recognized masters. Yet her true voice emerged later, with smaller character pieces for piano. Her so-called “salon” pieces are the same kind of short works that Brahms and Chopin made popular — many are true virtuoso works, equal in technical difficulty to any of the concert etudes of Chopin or Liszt. Based on this small collection of Chaminade’s music, one can only wonder why she has had to wait so long to be admitted to the pantheon of great French Romantic composers.

Price: $25.98