6. Candlelit Late Night

'She left before the lime trees bloomed'
Lili Boulanger had a tragically brief life, marred by chronic illness. She was the first woman to win France’s prestigious Prix de Rome aged only nineteen, she died when only 24. She filled her short years with furious musical activity, lively correspondence and wartime activism. Clairières dans le ciel is her only song cycle, an intense set of thirteen love songs traversing, in the manner of Schumann's Dichterliebe, the hushed wonder of early infatuation and trembling elation to the inevitable sorrows of separation and loss. The cycle blooms with luminous beauty but is also unsparing with raw feeling and terrifying cries of despair. Katharine Dain and Sam Armstrong have recorded this rare and beautiful song cycle on the adventurous Dutch 7 Mountain label.