Mel Bonis: Orchestral Works – Rumon Gamba

Mel (Mélanie Hélène) Bonis was born in Paris in 1858, and showed a prodigious talent for music from an early age, attending the Paris Conservatoire from the age of sixteen, studying alongside Debussy and Pierné under César Franck. Her passionate relationship with the singer Amédée-Louis Hettich was frowned upon by her parents, who pressured her to marry Édouard Domange, a twice-widowed industrialist with five children.

Bonis threw herself into her role as wife and stepmother, until a reunion with Hettich in the 1890s reignited her serious interest in composition. She composed more than 300 works, including pieces for solo piano, chamber music, and over forty mélodies for voice and piano. As Bonis was too modest for self-promotion, and a victim of gender-bias, her music fell into obscurity after the First World War, and she became bedridden from arthritis. She continued to compose until her death, in 1937. Her orchestral output dates from two decades, between 1891 and 1912, and is well represented on this album.