BLANCHE SELVA (1884-1942)
French pianist

The great Czech composer, Leóš Janáček said of Blanche Selva: "Her fingers sow the wind, diffuse perfume, produce mist and weave the sun's brilliance."

At the age of 9 she was admitted to the Paris Conservatory where she studied under Alphonse Duvernoy.  Studies with Vincent d'Indy followed.  She began her teaching career at the Schola Cantorum de Paris in 1901, subsequently holding faculty positions at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg, the École Normale de Musique in Paris, and the Prague Conservatory, eventually founding with Juan Massià, the man who would become her husband, her own music school in Barcelona in 1924. 

She had a successful career as a concert pianist.  In 1904, Selva gave a series of seventeen recitals in which she performed the entire keyboard works of Bach. Over the next several years, she gave the premier performances of Iberia by Isaac Albéniz. But her career as a performing artist was brought to an end in 1930 when she suffered a paralysis.

She was also an accomplished composer whose works consisted primarily of music for the piano, voice and chorus.  She is also known for having transcribed the music of d'Indy and Cesar Franck for piano.  And she wrote.  The best known of her writings is a monograph on the wonderful and neglected (outside of his native France) composer, Déodat de Séverac, published in 1930.

Blanche Selva was a fine chamber musician as you will judge for yourselves from the lovely performance of Beethoven's Spring Sonata.

Bach  Partita 1 in B♭ major, BWV 825
Prélude - Allemande - Courante - Sarabande - Menuet I-II - Gigue

recorded in 1928