In 2002 a large cache of scores by Swiss composer/pianist Caroline Boissier-Butini (1786-1836) came to light in the Bibliothèque de Genève. Not much is known about her musical education, although her upper-class lifestyle and supportive husband allowed her the freedom to pursue and develop her talents as both composer and pianist. Her fluid and confident keyboard idiom often suggests the discursive mood swings of Schubert at his loosest and most unfettered, although the First sonata’s Rondo agitato owes a lot to the Beethoven “Tempest” sonata finale.
If Boissier-Butini didn’t fill pages with memorable melodies, her penchant for diverse keyboard textures, dramatic pauses, fleeting quirky moments, and expressive intensity more than compensates. Using a well-regulated Broadwood fortepiano similar to the one that the composer owned, Edoardo Torbianelli throws himself into this music. He infuses the long chains of trills in the Sonata No. 1 slow movement with ardency, color, and impeccable control, and supports the Variations on a Bohemian Air’s fast and frilly right-hand runs with firm and purposeful left-hand underpinnings. Torbianelli inflects the sudden harmonic shifts in the Second sonata’s first movement with stinging dynamism and a smoother double note technique than what we hear from some of our more territorial period-instrument “specialists”. Gallo’s judiciously resonant sonics and extensive scholarly annotations make this fascinating disc all the more valuable and enticing to keyboard mavens on the lookout for rare finds by minor masters.
