‘[Chaminade] wrote orchestral music, ballets and songs, but is known to most people as the writer of tuneful and graceful short piano compositions, with no intricacy of texture, no elaboration of form, and no depth of feeling, but pleasant to hear and to play, and so tasteful in conception and execution as to disarm the highbrow critic.’

Thus the 1955 Oxford Companion to Music damned her with faint praise.

It is typical of the kind of patronising, chauvinistic assessment with which the French composer had to contend for most of her illustrious career. And yet during her lifetime, her financial success and public popularity was such as to make any of her peers green with envy. She filled the concert halls of Europe and America playing her own music. She was the first female composer ever to record her own music. She played for royalty, became the first female recipient of the Légion d’Honneur, advertised a brand of soap (Mornay) and even inspired a new line of confectionery (Chocolats Chaminade). Perhaps most remarkable of all, at the height of her fame before the First World War there were roughly 200 Chaminade Clubs in the United States. Few composers and pianists of any sex have ever inspired that kind of devotion. Well over a century later, many of these clubs are still going strong.

Then, just as quickly and compellingly as her music had achieved such enormous popularity, did it fall out of fashion, a fact no better illustrated than by this collection of discs. Chaminade’s recordings of her own music (tracks 1 to 7)—the only disc recordings she ever made, and some of the very earliest—date from November 1901. Over the next 29 years, over 85 discs of her piano music were issued, the last being that of Automne, Chaminade’s best-known piece, recorded by Mark Hambourg in 1930 (track 28). After that date, not a single piece of Chaminade’s piano music was recorded for another two decades. It must also be noted that over that period of more than quarter of a century (the first recording of any Chaminade music was made in 1899 by a Frenchman named Henri Thomas who sang her once-popular L’anneau d’argent) an almost equal number of discs were issued of her songs, instrumental pieces and arrangements of her piano works. For example, Marcel Moyse’s fine 1928 account of her Concertino for flute, and the Kreisler brothers Fritz and Hugo in their various iterations of Sérénade espagnole. We find even Her Majesty’s Band of the Grenadier Guards playing Air de Ballet (a disc, incidentally, made on the very first day of the 20th century). In short, Chaminade’s music was well served in the early years of the gramophone.

So what of Madame Chaminade herself and the other pianists here who championed her work? Cécile Louise Stephanie Chaminade was born on 8 August 1857 in Paris. Her father was the wealthy director of an insurance company, her mother an accomplished amateur pianist. When she was eight, the family moved to the affluent neighbourhood of Le Vésinet, about 16 km from the capital, and a house built by her father, a grand dwelling at what is today 41, Boulevard du Président-Roosevelt. This was Cécile’s home until 1925. Her parents had seven children, three of whom died in infancy. Henri and Louise were Cécile’s older brother and sister; her younger sister, Henriette, would go on to enjoy a brief marriage (1884 to 1891) to the pianist and composer Moritz Moszkowski. The Chaminade house was filled with music and, encouraged by her mother, Cécile began to compose and play the piano at an early age. Georges Bizet who lived nearby on the Route des Cultures was a frequent visitor, predicted a brilliant future for her, and called her his ‘little Mozart’.

Cécile’s father, however, though having witnessed his daughter’s precocious ability as a musician and pianist, following the restrictive social mores of the day, refused to let her study at the Conservatoire. Piano and harmony lessons were to be had only at home—with only the finest teachers, of course: Félix Le Couppey for piano, Martin Marsick for violin, Benjamin Godard for composition and Augustin Savard for harmony and counter­point. In 1878, now aged 21, she gave a performance of her own works in her home. The Paris musical establishment was invited, among them the composer Ambroise Thomas, the director of the Opéra Comique. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ he remarked: ‘This is not a woman who composes, but a composer who happens to be a woman.’

Her career was launched. There followed a piano sonata, a symphonie dramatique entitled Les Amazones, a comic one-act opera La Sévillane, the Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, and, in 1888, a ballet Callirhoë, premiered in Marseille and subsequently performed over 200 times, notably at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

As a pianist playing only her own music, Chaminade appeared in Brussels, Berlin, Holland, Switzerland and throughout Great Britain (London, Birmingham, Bath, Leeds, Manchester). She was twice invited by Queen Victoria to play (and stay) at Windsor Castle. To those who know Chaminade solely through the myriad short piano solos of the kind heard here, it will come as a surprise to read a contemporary report:

She has been especially in demand for the performance of her own concerto, which has been given in the Gewandhaus and London Philharmonic concerts, as well as those of Lamoureux and Colonne in Paris … It is undoubtedly her songs that have made her fame so widespread. She has published over sixty in all, nearly every one endowed with the delightful charm that is associated with her name. These songs are full of the rarest and most piquant melodic beauty, and the accompaniments are rich in colour and originality.

In 1901, at the age of 44, she married Louis-Mathieu Carbonel, a recently divorced music publisher some 15 years older than herself. It seems to have been un mariage blanc in which the two of them maintained separate establishments for most of the year. Carbonel died in 1907 after which Chaminade made her first visit to the United States, a triumphant procession in which she gave 25 concerts in two months to sold-out houses including her debut in Carnegie Hall. In 1912, her beloved mother died. Whether coincidence or not, this seems to have been the event that led to her slow withdrawal from the creative world. After the First World War, she gave only a few more concerts and composed very little. For her last 25 years, she lived as a virtual recluse in Monte Carlo. Her health began to deteriorate and, at the age of 83, she had to have her right foot amputated. She lived alone with her dog Chang until her death in 1944 at the age of 87.

After the seven pieces recorded by their composer for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company, comes one of four Chaminade pieces recorded by the extraordinary Lilian Bryant (1871-1955). This versatile, pioneering pianist, conductor and composer has been quite forgotten by reference books and overlooked even by campaigning feminists looking for a role model. Here is an artist who recorded for Edison-Bell and Sterling cylinders from the late 1890s onwards, and for the Columbia, Odeon, Regal, Crystalate and Pathé labels either as soloist, conductor or as accompanist, whether to violinists Alfred Indig and Boris Lensky, clarinettist Haydn Draper or singers such as Louis Lynel, John McCormack and George Baker.

The latter she partnered as both pianist and conductor, their first disc made in 1909 when he was still a student. Lilian became the first of his three wives in 1911, sometimes recording under the name of Mrs George Baker (they divorced in 1922), but also as ‘Mlle Moretti’. Known as ‘Billy’ by her fellow musicians, as musical director of the Pathéphone Company, in 1912 Bryant conducted the Imperial Symphony Orchestra in the first ever recording of a Tchaikovsky symphony (the ‘Pathétique’), albeit much abridged (by her). Some of her piano playing is on the heavy-handed side (Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat for example) and includes novelty solos such as The Electric Girl, a fox trot by one Otto Helmburgh-Holmesvery. Others are very fine, including a forthright Rustle of Spring (Sinding) and this Toccata, one of Chaminade’s most inspired creations and yet unaccountably little known.

Chaminade had no more loyal champion than her sometime pupil and subsequent friend Una Bourne (1882-1974). Between 1914 and 1926 Bourne made 23 recordings of Chaminade’s music (a few of them remakes of earlier acoustic titles). Five of them have already appeared in the two-CD collection of Una Bourne’s HMV recordings 1914-1926 issued by APR in 2022. For a full biography of this unjustly forgotten Australian virtuoso and recording pioneer, the reader is referred to the booklet of APR6037 by the present writer. Feted as a child prodigy in her native Melbourne, Bourne won huge popularity in the UK and Europe through her many recordings (91 in total) including, with the violinist Marjorie Hayward, abridged versions of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata (1918), the Franck and Elgar Sonatas (1919) and electrical recordings of Mozart’s Sonata in B flat K378 and Grieg’s Sonata Op 45 (1926). In 1939 she returned to Australia for a final time, there to establish a school of piano-playing, giving the occasional concert and teaching. She left a lasting legacy in the form of the Mona McCaughey Scholarship – Una Bourne, still awarded at the University of Melbourne and named after Bourne and her lifetime partner.

A second Australian, also almost forgotten, is William Murdoch (1881-1942). Born at Sandhurst (Bendigo) in the state of Victoria, he won a scholarship to study law at the same University of Melbourne while also studying music at Melbourne’s Conservatory of Music. Aged 17, he was awarded a scholarship to study in London at the Royal College of Music. Still undecided on whether to pursue a career in law or music, on graduation he was offered a tour of South Africa as a soloist with Dame Clara Butt. The reception he received made up his mind and, after serving in France as a bandsman with the Grenadier Guards, he embarked on a life of international tours and recordings. Most of these were made for Columbia between 1917 and 1931 and included the first commercial recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 3 (conducted by Hamilton Harty in 1925). All the solo electrical recordings he made for the label (between 1925 and 1931) can be heard on APR6029. If Murdoch is remembered at all, it is probably as a chamber music musician and for the valuable partnerships he formed with violinists Albert Sammons and Arthur Catterall, violist Lionel Tertis and the cellists W H Squire and Lauri Kennedy. In 1919 he took part in the first performance of Elgar’s Piano Quintet. Like Bourne, he made recordings of the ‘Kreutzer’ and Franck violin sonatas. Like George Baker (see above) he was married three times. He died at his home in Dorking, Surrey, at the relatively early age of 54.

Among the most popular of Chaminade’s pieces was the ‘Pas des écharpes’, better known as the ‘Scarf Dance’, from the ballet Callirhoë. In an interview for The Étude magazine (Vol 26 No 12, December 1908), the composer wrote an article ‘How to Play My Best Known Pieces’. One of them was the ‘Scarf Dance’:

[It] requires a well-marked rhythm, like all music written primarily for theatre dancing. The two strongly contrasted themes from which it is constructed need to be played very distinctly. The first part, in A flat requires sonority; … in the orchestra it is announced by violins; it should be played with a mellow, ringing tone, and while always maintaining a moderate waltz rhythm in strict tempo, this characteristic theme should always be played with a slight “Rubato”.

The second part in 2-4 rhythm, introduced in the orchestra by a few bars of recitative for the oboe, is full of melancholy. Here, above all, it is necessary to make the piano sing with a clinging touch, yet, at the same time, keeping the hand very supple, so that the tone shall be full and penetrating. The part which precedes the return of the first subject should be played with abandon, rapidly, brilliantly, slowing a little towards the end, and when the first subject, in A flat, makes its reappearance there should be a slight pause before taking up the theme.

Listeners will judge for themselves how closely Chaminade follows her own advice. Curiously, several famous jazz pianists were drawn to the ‘Scarf Dance’: Eubie Blake, Donald Lambert and Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith all set down their own distinctive versions. The distinguished Swiss-born American pianist, conductor, composer and pedagogue Rudolph Ganz (1877-1972) recorded it in New York in 1918, one of the myriad poplar short works he made for the US branch of the Pathé label from 1917 onwards. Ganz made his debut aged 12 as a cellist and at 16 as a pianist. He was a highly successful teacher working up until almost the time of his death at the age of 95.

Both internet and reference books are shy of biographical details of the next pianist in this collection. Gertrude (Ethel) Meller (1879-1945) was born in Bedford, England, and studied with Francesco Berger (1834-1933) at the Royal Academy of Music. She was clearly the centre of London musical life at the turn of the last century for we find her in June 1907 playing in a ‘Grand Farewell Concert’ at the Royal Albert Hall accompanying Clara Butt and her husband Kennerley Rumford prior to their departure for a tour of Australia. Meller made several appearances at the Henry Wood Proms and between 1922 and 1927 recorded over 60 titles for the Homochord label, all of which surely merits a retrospective issue. In addition to standard fare by Chopin, Schubert and Mendelssohn, Meller recorded pieces by Arensky, Godard, Poldini, Moszkowski and many others—as well as three further Chaminade titles not included here (Arlequine, Op 53, Valse-Arabesque, Op 98/4 and acoustic and electrical recordings of ‘Automne’).

‘Pas des Amphores’ is but one of three Chaminade titles recorded by Marie Novello (1898-1928) (the others are the ‘Air de Ballet’ discussed above and the Quatrième valse played in this collection by Una Bourne). Interestingly, early in her career (1908) she accompanied Dame Emma Albani on a tour of the UK. Albani appeared with Chaminade several times, including two command per­form­ances before Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle.

Marie Novello was a Welsh pianist born Maria Williams, adopted by her piano teacher Clara Novello Davies, the mother of Ivor Novello. After these early lessons she became one of the last pupils of the great Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna. In 1923 she recorded his Toccata, Op 46 No 5, another of these typical short works that fitted neatly on to one side of a 78-rpm disc. The exception in Novello’s case was her sparkling account of Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No 1, a work she played at the Proms (1912), one of seven appearances at the Festival, all accompanied by the Queen’s Hall Orchestra under Henry Wood. In other words, Marie Novello, was feted from a very young age as a considerable artist, though many critics described her playing as impulsive, lacking in control and with a harsh tone. These faults are not evident on the many recordings she made for the Edison Bell label between 1920 and 1926. Her final two records, her first electrical sides, were made for HMV just 15 months before her early death from throat cancer at the age of 44.

Like Marie Novello, Max Darewski (1894-1929) was a child prodigy who died young, aged only 35. Like Novello he recorded several Chaminade titles—the same ‘Scarf Dance’ and Pierrette recorded by the composer, ‘Automne’ and Quatrième valse. We hear him here in ‘Fileuse’ (No 3 of the Études de concert, Op 35, of which ‘Automne’ is No 2) and the only recording of Arlequine, Op 53, of the shellac era. Darewski was born in Manchester, the son of a Polish singing teacher from Minsk and the younger brother of the songwriter Herman Darewski. Aged seven, he wrote a piece England’s Crown to celebrate the coronation of Edward VII, and two years later we read of him conducting a symphony orchestra in Bournemouth playing his own compositions. He was not yet a teenager when he began touring Europe as a pianist. As well as a celebrated conductor of brass bands, he also wrote several musical scores that played in the UK and on Broadway.

Though from a different generation, the English pianist Maurice Cole (1902-1990) was already recording Chaminade (and many others) in the same decade of the 1920s. Here he plays the Scherzo in C major, the first of the Études de concert set mentioned above. This was made for the rare Aco label. More frequently he is encountered on the budget Broadcast and Vocalion labels, then in the late ’50s and ’60s on Saga for whom he made some well-received Bach LPs. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and then, privately, with the great Belgian pianist Arthur de Greef (see APR7401). Cole was the first ever pianist to broadcast a piano recital on the BBC.

Perhaps the least-expected name to appear on this role-call of Chaminade players is that of Hans Barth (1897-1956). He was born in Leipzig and, as a small child, won a scholarship to study at the Conservatory there with the legendary Carl Reinecke. In 1907 he was taken to the United States and made his New York recital debut the following year. In 1912 he became a naturalized American citizen. His meeting with Ferruccio Busoni inspired him to experiment with new scales and, with George Weitz, perfected a portable quarter-tone piano (1928). He composed a quarter-tone Piano Concerto with strings (also tuned to quarter-tones) played by him, the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski in 1930, and several other works for the same medium. He toured the USA and Europe playing piano, quarter-tone piano, and harpsichord. Later, he taught at the Mannes School in New York and, from 1948, at the Jacksonville College of Music in Florida.

Here is Chaminade’s advice on how best to interpret ‘Flatterer’ (as she titles the La lisonjera in her Étude article:

‘La lisonjera’, which is a feminine Spanish word meaning ‘enchanter’ or ‘cajoler’ is easy enough to play, but very difficult to interpret; here the composer has to count more than ever on the intuition and musical tact of the performer, for it is nearly impossible to indicate very clearly the humorous allurement and rhythmic quality of this little piece. Artists have many different ways of playing it; the composer, however, may be permitted to prefer that which comes nearest to her own. The nuances should be carefully observed, and also the rubato, stringendo, etc. In order to give a good rendering, the movement of the peace should not be too languid.

Does Barth’s performance perhaps come closer to the spirit than the composer’s own?

Another Leschetizky pupil was Mark Hambourg (1879-1960). It is difficult to exaggerate his popularity on the international stage, touring all over the world from an early age, so that by 1913 when he was 34, he had already played his 2000th concert. His repertoire was extensive and included everything from John Blow, William Byrd and Thomas Arne to new music by Debussy, Scriabin and Rachmaninov. Hambourg can claim to have made more records than any other classical pianist up to the mid-1930s, his earliest in 1909, his last in 1937: over 200 in all, and every single one for HMV. A selection of 51 of them can be found on APR6023, a further two discs of his flamboyant accounts of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies are on APR7040. (For more extensive biographical and discographical details of this great artist, the reader is referred to the booklets by Jonathan Summers and Bryan Crimp for these releases.) ‘Automne’, which Hambourg recorded in 1930, is (and always has been) Chaminade’s most popular and oft-recorded work by some distance.

Finally, to Shura Cherkassy (1909-1995) and the only recording in this collection to have been recorded after 1930—two decades later, in fact. His 1950 recording of ‘Autrefois’ concluded the three-CD set of his complete 78-rpm recordings issued on APR7316. It is included here for several reasons: it is a touching, benchmark performance of one of Chaminade’s hidden gems (Cherkassky made it peculiarly his own); it is the only recording made of the piece during the entire shellac era; it is the very last recording of any of Chaminade’s music recorded on a 78-rpm disc; and it illustrates vividly how rapid was the decline of interest in her music: although she lived until 1944, no commercial recordings of her piano music were made by anyone between 1930 and 1950. Today, many artists are, happily, making up for lost time.

Jeremy Nicholas © 2025