Clara Schumann’s famous one-liner “a woman must not desire to compose” still prompts much debate, but Compositrices, an eight-disc set featuring 165 pieces by 21 women, makes an eloquent argument for her other quote: “There is nothing greater than the joy of composing”.

Based in a Venetian palace, Palazetto Bru Zane was set up 14 years ago to promote French Romantic music from 1780-1920. This new release makes for 10 hours of listening and a deep dive reveals plenty of buried treasure.

“Women composers belonged to their own time before being representatives of their gender,” the liner notes attest. Some of them, like Mel Bonis, the Boulanger sisters Lili and Nadia and Hedwige Chretien, were taught by or studied alongside such giants as Camille Saint-Saëns, Gabriel Fauré, César Franck and Claude Debussy, others were condemned to the salon by controlling husbands or moralistic fathers. The essay in the liner notes is aptly titled “A Salon des Refusées” and you may well find a Manet or Whistler masterpiece in this collection.

Bonis is represented generously with...