Simplicity meets virtuosity: Florent Schmitt’s a cappella vocal masterpiece En bonnes voix (1938).

Throughout his extraordinarily long and productive life, the French composer Florent Schmitt would return again and again to the human voice.  His earliest catalogued compositions dating from the 1880s were various mélodies, and his final work was the Messe en quatres parties for mixed chorus and organ, completed just a few months before his death […]

Florent Schmitt’s affectionate tribute to Frédéric Chopin: Le Chant de la nuit (1949/51).

Recently, audio documentation of one of Florent Schmitt’s most interesting (and elusive) choral compositions has emerged – and it comes from an unlikely source.  It is a 1987 live performance of Schmitt’s Le Chant de la nuit, Op. 120, a work that carries the subtitle Ode à Frédéric Chopin.  The performance is by the Chiba […]