Performing the Works of Historic Female Composers
One of my passions is to share the incredible music of historic female composers with modern-day audiences. It is incredibly rewarding to see the pleased responses of listeners to new pieces of music that at the same time inhabit musical sound worlds familiar to them but are new and unique in their own way—each with their own distinctive compositional voices.
Since there are often few or no recordings, each piece provides an exciting puzzle. These women rarely benefited from the revision process of publication, so the type-set scores or manuscripts that do exist often contain a number of errors, inconsistencies and musical problems including tempi and orchestration issues that require forensic investigation.
Beyond the technical matters, the process of getting into the musical thought processes of these composers is equally exciting. What musical ideas are they trying to convey in the notation that they have left us?
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It is my mission to add academically informed and intuitively musical performances to what I hope will be a growing performance practice of these women's compositions.
Over the past decade this has included performances of:
Ethyl Smyth: Serenade in D (2014)
GrassRoots Festival Orchestra
GrassRoots Festival, Ithaca, NY
Germaine Taillefere: Piano Concerto (No. 1)
orig. orch. for 13 inst. (2015)
Daniel Grimwood, piano, Sinfonia Adesso
Holywell Music Room, Oxford, England
Grace Williams: Sea Sketches (2017)
Orchestra of St John’s
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England
Clara Schumann: Piano Concerto (2019)
Carson Becke, piano - Oxford University Orchestra
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, England
Louise Farrenc: Symphony No. 3 (2019)
Sinfonietta Bardou
Florence Price: Symphony No. 1 (2021)
Sheffield University Symphony Orchestra
Firth Hall, University of Sheffield
Fanny Mendelssohn: Overture in C (2022)
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, England
Louise Farrenc: Symphony No. 2 (2022)
Sinfonietta Bardou
Ethyl Smyth: Boatswain’s Mate: Overture (2022)
Bournemouth Resound Ensemble
On tour in Southwest England
Florence Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement (2023)
Samantha Ege, piano – Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Morfydd Owen: Nocturne (2023)
Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, England