A new label revives forgotten female composers’ music

The realization came as a shock to Héloïse Luzzati. How could she have spent the better part of three decades playing music without every studying a piece composed by a woman?

As her gigs dried up at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and concert halls around the world went dark for months, the French cellist dedicated much of her time to remedying that gap. “The role of women in the history of music began to gain a certain importance in my life as a musician,” the French cellist told NPR’s Leila Fadel. “We don’t know enough works composed by women. My aim is to increase the percentage of known works written by female composers.”

She unearthed manuscripts by the likes of Mel Bonis (1858-1937), Clémence de Grandval (1828-1907) and Rita Strohl (1865-1941). In many cases, these pages of music had simply been sitting in a trunk in the attic, preserved by the composers’ own descendants.

Luzzati has a hard time picking just one piece as her favorite. “There [are] so many. I cannot answer this question,” she said. “I ask myself, how could I [not] know this piece?”

Many of these works had never been published or recorded before, and yet to Luzzati they shined like priceless jewels. Her project quickly grew from a set of online biographical videos to a virtual advent calendar featuring recorded performances, a festival with top soloists at châteaux and other historic sites near Paris — and now a new record label.

La Boîte à Pépites (The Jewel Box) aims to “exhume pieces that seem worthy of a good position in the standard musical repertoire,” Luzzati explained. The label’s first release, launched in France in April and set for September 30 in the UK, is centered around French composer Charlotte Sohy, who died in 1955.

“I was completely captivated by this music,” said Luzzati, who gave a special nod to what she considers a “masterpiece,” the Op. 24 piano trio.

“It’s completely specific as French music from the beginning of the 20th century — sometimes impressionistic, sometimes figurative, with colors of Ravel, Chausson or Debussy.”

The rich harmonies also come from someone who faced tremendous odds, having survived two world wars, mothered seven children and cared for a conductor-composer (Marcel Labey). At times, she composed under a male name — that of her grandfather, Charles Sohy — or just used the abbreviation Ch. Sohy “to bypass the prejudices about women,” Luzzati explained. And yet her catalogue includes 35 opuses. She studied under composer Vincent d’Indy, himself a student of César Franck.

A three-CD boxset — also available on streaming platforms — features world premieres of Sohy’s piano, chamber and orchestral works. Among the soloists are rising and veteran stars of the classical world in their own right, including David Kadouch, Xavier Phillips, Célia Oneto Bensaïd and Marie-Laure Garnier. The Quatuor Hermès recorded Sohy’s first two quartets and the Orchestre national Avignon-Provence took up orchestral works under the baton of Debora Waldman.

It all began when Waldman introduced Luzzati to Sohy’s grandson François-Henri Labey. Since retiring from directing regional conservatories about a decade ago, Labey has copied his grandmother’s handwritten work in digital format on a computer. He’s said that he stumbled upon her “Grande Guerre” (Great War) Symphony in C sharp minor in the bottom of a drawer. In 2019, Waldman led the Orchestre Victor-Hugo Franche-Comté in the posthumous world premiere of the work, composed during World War I. Sohy was informed of her husband’s death on the battlefield while writing the second movement, only to learn a week later that he was found alive.