A recent review by Sophie Bourdais from Télérama, the weekly French cultural and leisure magazine about the classical album, Un Lieu À Soi (A Place of One's Own) celebrating female contemporaries of Virginia Woolf, including female composers such as Ireland’s Ina Boyle. This prestigious French recording covers 400 years of music and includes Ina Boyle’s Three Ancient Irish Poems with Maïlys de Villoutreys, Hélène Desaint, and Clara Izambert-Jarry.
Review from Télérama, words by Sophie Bourdais.
“In 1929, (Virginia) Woolf denounced the constraints that blocked women’s access to literary creation. These constraints also applied to female composers, and this double album gives them centre stage, calling upon contemporaries of the suffragettes (and Woolf) such as Ethel Smyth (1853-1944), Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), and Ina Boyle (1889-1967)...”
English translation below:
ACTESIX - UN LIEU À SOI
Classical Music
Various Artists, Directed by Samuel Hengebaert
What do these two black and white squares hide, one fitting inside the other, accompanied by a booklet with a carefully designed graphic? A captivating anthology of four centuries of English music, concocted and curated by violist Samuel Hengebaert under the patronage of Virginia Woolf and her essay "A Room of One's Own." In 1929, Woolf denounced the constraints that blocked women's access to literary creation. These constraints also applied to female composers, and this double album gives them centre stage, calling upon contemporaries of the suffragettes (and Woolf) such as Ethel Smyth (1853-1944), Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), and Ina Boyle (1889-1967), as well as their ancestor Lady Mary Dering (1629-1704) and their distant heirs. A lively dialogue is established between them and their male counterparts, who were more favourably treated by posterity: John Blow, Henry Purcell, Frank Bridge, and Benjamin Britten.
Structured around the three complementary voices of Mailys de Villoutreys, Anaïs Bertrand, and Lucile Richardot, whose a cappella trios punctuate the journey, the program mixes genres, moods, and eras, and gives pride of place to the great British song.
Violist Hélene Desaint, pianists Alexis Gournel and Adam Laloum, gambists Julie Dessaint and Etienne Floutier, harpist Clara Izambert-Jarry, and harpsichordist Ronan Khalil (founder, with Samuel Hengebaert, of the ActeSix collective and the Oktav Records label) accompany the singers but also indulge in instrumental solos, such as the spectacular sonata for viola and piano by Rebecca Clarke, with its fusion of lyricism and turbulence. In the chamber music bubble of this "place of one's own," where everything is linked with poetry, the imagination and emotions of the performers unfold freely and touch the listener all the more deeply.
Sophie Bourdais
2 CD Oktav Records