Composer and pianist
Helene de Montgeroult
lived a life worthy of an epic historical film and became the first female professor at the Conservatoire de Paris, but her music is rarely played or recorded, even as music by women is being rediscovered. She composed a Cours complete pour l'enseignement du forte-piano in 1820; it included 972 exercises and 114 full-scale etudes written over the preceding years dating back to 1788. The 29 etudes on this release by
Clare Hammond
are drawn from those, and it is valuable to have them. Listeners are likely to notice two things about them. First is their high technical level; each etude is indicated as being for the left or the right hand, designed for mastery of a specific skill ("Pour rendre les doigts independants," "to make the fingers independent"), but the other hand is generally given plenty to do. Second, the music, for the most part, sounds like it comes from a later era than it does, and 19th century commentators who proposed
Montgeroult
as a forerunner of
Chopin
had it right. On a spectrum running from
's etudes to the instructional works of
Czerny
,
falls in the middle, sometimes to one side or the other, but her work showed a keen awareness of contemporary trends. Essential for listeners interested in music by women, this is also an intriguing release in general. ~ James Manheim