Dr. Jürgen Schaarwächter made a great review on the CD by label CPO for Klassik.com
Cellist Raphael Wallfisch, always on the lookout for undeservedly forgotten repertoire, offers us three chamber music works by Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans. The works were composed within a few years from 1919 onwards. The first work, the Cello Sonata, is an extremely substantial, weighty composition – rich in expression, substance and a multitude of moods, colours and shades. Each of the four movements has its own character and yet is part of the whole. The magic of the ‘un poco Allegretto’ and the following Adagio is perfectly realised – Wallfisch is a magician of tonal shading (it doesn’t matter at all if some notes are not quite exactly in tune). In Ed Spanjaard (the conductor of his first Bosmans CD), Wallfisch has a congenial piano partner who makes the piano sing in the most beautiful way. The recording technique has perfectly balanced the instruments with each other, while at the same time not detracting from the individuality of the venue (the City Halls in Glasgow). Wallfisch and Spanjaard take more time than Doris Hochscheid and Frans van Ruth (Dabringhaus and Grimm), but in doing so they also bring out the compositional characteristics of Bosman and the work.
The second major work for cello and piano is the Trois Impressions from 1926 – now much more strongly influenced by the music of the 1920s, with a high recognition value. The Cortège could evoke an oriental caravan – but is it not rather an East Asian one? The harmonies could suggest a certain chinoiserie. Nuit calme proves not to be so calm after all, with its ostinato eighth-note movement in the piano – the art here is to restrain the cello so that its grand melodic arcs do not push themselves excessively into the foreground. ‘En Espagne’ brings the triptych to a brilliant close, and it is precisely this movement that brings to mind the travel impressions of her French contemporaries Gabriel Pierné and Vincent d’Indy.
The third work on the CD was composed in 1921 between the other two – a nocturne for cello and harp – but at eleven and a half minutes, it is much longer than many nocturne compositions written at the same time. However, it is not so much the French musical language that we encounter here, but rather Belgian symbolism. The composition is unique in its form, with melodies being played, fading away and being replaced by others, like images in a dream. Sharron Griffiths plays beautifully for the most part – it is the cellist who gives the music its real character, not shying away from turning the dream images into nightmares, which soon disappear from the mind again. Raphael Wallfisch currently masters this ambiguity like no other.
In addition, the booklet text remains unexpectedly and unusually bland and fails to do justice to Bosman’s individuality.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention