Lili Boulanger – Faust et Hélène

Of the handful of women composers whose work has been rediscovered only in the last decade or so, none has seemed a more tragic case than Lili Boulanger, sister of the composer and pianist Nadia, who died aged twenty-four in 1918. This recording includes two psalm settings as well as the thirty-minute cantata Faust et Hélène, a thrilling, musically seductive setting of Goethe fully deserving of a wider audience.

When he made this recording one of Gramophone’s Critics Choice in January 2000, Lionel Salter wrote, ‘I was overwhelmed by the revelation of Lili Boulanger’s Faust et Hélène, a work that still strikes me as of sheer genius’. The CD went on to win the Gramophone Award for best Orchestral Recording of the Year.