Completely Unknown Violin and piano music by René de Boisdeffre - heard by PAUL SARCICH 'To describe Boisdeffre as "worthy but dull" would be doing him a disservice ...'

Serbian violinist Dejan Bogdanovich and Polish pianist Jakub Tchorzewski have here resurrected four of the violin works of René de Boisdeffre (no, me neither), a French Romantic composer who seems to have made the bulk of his output between 1878 and 1888, consisting largely of songs and over sixty chamber works. The only contemporaneous critic to have paid him any attention put his songs in the realm of Gounod and Massenet, and the chamber music alongside that of Saint-Saëns and Lalo, citing a Mendelssohnian influence behind it all. There is certainly much to be heard of these composers, as well as others like Franck, in Boisdeffre's work.

So he does not seem to have garnered much of a following in his own day, despite membership of several august musical bodies, publication, study with some names and some prize-winning along the way...

VIOLIN MUSIC

PIANO MUSIC

FRANCE

ITALY