Henritte Bosmans

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Dutch composer who became a celebrated pianist by the 1920s, performing throughout Europe with among others Monteux, Mengelberg and Ansermet. She gave 22 concertos with the Concertgebouw Orchestra alone between 1929 and 1949. Bosmans was the daughter of Henri Bosmans, principal cellist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the pianist Sara Benedicts, piano teacher at the Amsterdam Conservatory. Her father died when she was 6 months old. She studied piano with her mother and became a piano teacher herself at the age of 17. Bosmans began her composition studies with Jan Willem Kersbergen and later with Cornelis Dopper (1921–22) and Willem Pijper (1927–30). She maintained a close friendship with Benjamin Britten. Bosmans had relationships with both men and women, with whom she often also collaborated musically. She was partnered from 1920-1927 to the Dutch cellist and composer Frieda Belinfante, who was a prominent lesbian and member of the Dutch Resistance during World War II, who in 1923 premiered Bosmans' Second Cello Concerto. She was later engaged, briefly, to the violinist Francis Koene, who died of a brain tumour in 1934, before they could be married. In the last years of her life Bosmans also appears to have been involved with the French singer Noémie Pérugia, for whom she wrote a series of songs between the years 1949 and her death. Henriëtte Bosmans died from stomach cancer in her native city of Amsterdam on 2 July 1952, aged 56. Link to Wikipedia biography