Cécile Chaminade: most underrated piano composer?

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I've recently been listening to a lot of stuff by her, and (at least so far) she's in my top 3 favorite composers -- behind only Alkan and Liszt. Many of her works were well-received by critics.
A few of my favorites by her:
Op. 37 no. 3 Scarf Dance

Op. 21 Sonata in C Minor

Op. 35 6 Études de concert (particularly no. 2 "Automne" and no. 5 "Impromptu")

Op. 39 Toccata

Op. 60 Les Sylvains

I recently checked to see if PS had any of her music, but searching her name turned up only 45 results (42 of which on the forum, seemingly zero sheet music). The only piece by her that seems to be remotely well known is a theme and variations piece played by Hamelin:

It's definitely a great piece, but IMO still not Chaminade's best.

What are your thoughts her music? Have any of you heard of her before? Do you know of any other similarly under-appreciated composers?

[aaronsf]

I'm glad you like Chaminade, and I encourage you to pursue this composer.

Sadly I'm not a fan.  I first encountered her "Scarf Dance" when I was about 7 years old, and at 7 I was enchanted.  But as an adult I've listened to or sight read a lot of her works, hoping to be persuaded of her compositional prowess.  For me she is basically a composer of salon music, and as such I find her works mostly superficial.  A few of her pieces are close to virtuosic in terms of piano technique (she was supposedly a wonderful pianist), but even they lack substance...at least for me.

[gasplamey]

Some of these are actually really good. Especially the "Theme and Variations" and "Sylvains" ones.
I think I might make a last-minute addition to the thing that some of you already know about.

[thorn]

The main thing of hers I know is the flute concertino (I used to play flute and it's standard rep). I never looked into her other stuff- think I've heard Automne and the Sonata somewhere before?

And for me the "most underrated" French composer of this period is Florent Schmitt. He was up there with Debussy and Ravel but his N*zi sympathies damaged his reputation. My favourite is the Ombres suite but he wrote smaller scale stuff too like Crepuscules

First movement of Ombres (my favourite)

[lelle]

My girlfriend used to play the Cecile Chamide variations you linked. I think they're probably the least interesting of the bunch of works you linked though! Definitely some good stuff in there, but I'd not rank her over my favorites.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Necroing this thread because I recently stumbled across this fantastic piece for piano and orchestra:
Op. 40 Konzertstück

IMO, this edges out Liszt's Concerto no. 1 and Prokofiev's Concerto no. 3 as my favorite piece for piano and orchestra, and one of my favorite pieces of all time. What are everyone's thoughts on it?

Also, came across this article about why Chaminade fell into obscurity, which is a really good read:
https://www.listenmusicculture.com/mastery/cecile-chaminade

[lelle]

That concerto is quite cool actually. Many nice ideas well executed.

You could argue it's not the deepest of emotions being conveyed, but that could be said for many of the other concerto war horses too.

[mjames]

I'm always intrigued by "underrated" claims because it's almost always a composer who composed music in a style that went "out of date" decades prior. See, most of what you posted from Chaminade is early 19th century music published in the late 19th century and in the early 20th century. The op. 21 you posted for example was published in 1893, Scriabin's 2nd Sonata was published in 1997 - the harmonic and technical language of the latter work is about 40 years ahead of the former.

The "standard repertoire" and "western canon of music" cares about composers who invent the wheel, in other words composers who push the boundaries of music in their respective genre or in general; not composers who spin the same wheel or and over again. Whenever I hear Chaminade's music she gives off the impression that she's a contemporary of Schumann, when in actuality she was born a year after he died, and her actual contemporary was Debussy.

It seems to me she if properly rated, she suffers the same fate of many talented composers who were popular during their lifetime, but fell off afterwards because their music never pushed the boundaries of convention like their contemporaries did.

[frodo10]

I'm always intrigued by "underrated" claims because it's almost always a composer who composed music in a style that went "out of date" decades prior. See, most of what you posted from Chaminade is early 19th century music published in the late 19th century and in the early 20th century. The op. 21 you posted for example was published in 1893, Scriabin's 2nd Sonata was published in 1997 - the harmonic and technical language of the latter work is about 40 years ahead of the former.

The "standard repertoire" and "western canon of music" cares about composers who invent the wheel, in other words composers who push the boundaries of music in their respective genre or in general; not composers who spin the same wheel or and over again. Whenever I hear Chaminade's music she gives off the impression that she's a contemporary of Schumann, when in actuality she was born a year after he died, and her actual contemporary was Debussy.

It seems to me she if properly rated, she suffers the same fate of many talented composers who were popular during their lifetime, but fell off afterwards because their music never pushed the boundaries of convention like their contemporaries did.

Listening to sonata as I type - not bad!

I agree with everything said here by Mjames.  I would add: If a composer wrote music at the same quality as Schumann or Chopin except 45 years too late - they would have a next to impossible battle to gain recognition of greatness.  Rachmaninov was able to write in the late romantic style and is considered great by many.  But he gets only a 2 sentence paragraph in my Grout "A History of Western music".  Compare this to Schoenberg who was born a year later than Rach in 1874 who gets 12 full pages and is mentioned in the table of contents. Rach is about as successful as you can get being I'll say 20 years too late. Chaminade being I'll say 40 years too late (agree with mjames) does not get mentioned in Grout, and I believe for good reason.  The quality does not match Chopin or Schumann and it's 40 years too late.

[frodo10]

2nd listen to the sonata - I like this!  This is close to the quality of one Schumann's 3 piano sonatas.  Definitely worthy of listening.  It is very well done and moving!  Especially the first 2 mvts. I still stand by my prior comments. Thank you for sharing!

P.S. - No - I never heard of her before and Yes to my own question: Chopin and Schumann both also used FFF dynamic markings.

Sorry for double post.

[essence]

One of my first piano albums had a piece by Chaminade. I only found out she was a woman in this thread.

It has some interest, I would play it through a few times as sight reading, but I don't think would spend much time on it.

Could be a good encore piece.

Looking at the link above of Autumne with score, it seems to be a piece which sounds more difficult than it is. Good party piece. I don't like the rubato in the Mark Viner performance at all - starts to get irritating.