Who's Afraid Of...? Boulanger Trio

Women in music - this is a topic that the three musicians of the multi-award-winning Boulanger Trio naturally find themselves confronted with time and time again. Not only in relation to themselves personally, but also to the musical work of female composers. Karla Haltenwanger, the ensemble's pianist, explains: ‘Time and again we have come across these fantastic female composers, some of whom were or still are barely known. And so the new album by the piano trio, which is based in Hamburg and Berlin, features music composed exclusively by women. ‘Who`s afraid of...?’ is the twelfth album by the Boulanger Trio and the third to be released on the Berlin Classics label. The composer Elfrida Andrée (1841-1929), for example, worked as an organist at Gothenburg Cathedral, contrary to the social conventions of the time. And this despite the fact that her daughter was just as talented as her brother. Surprisingly, there were women who were able to consistently pursue an artistic path long before Fanny Hensel and Elfrida Andrée. It is therefore all the more astonishing that the works of composer Lili Boulanger only became known to the general public in the 1960s, even though her sister, the important music teacher Nadia Boulanger, spent a lifetime championing her sister's works after her untimely death. The life and work of Maria Theresia Paradis (1759-1824), who, despite her blindness, undertook a major concert tour of Europe as a pianist and had her own music typewriter for composing, is also fascinating. The Boulanger Trio found many interesting women whose music should be played and whose stories should be told.