What would it mean to 'compose like a woman'? The present collection answers the question, in a literal sense, while undoing the premise on which the question was asked in the first place. In social and historical terms, it means enjoying privileges of upbringing, education, and/or wealth that were historically denied to the vast majority of women. It means, on the part of the women represented here, a single-minded determination in pursuit of their vocation, helping them to overcome prejudice and sexism in a cultural, social and political milieu that has consistently denied women the opportunity to find and express their own voice in music. Only with movements of emancipation in the last century, and much more rapidly in the last 50 years, has this situation begun to be addressed and corrected. What composing like a woman does not mean - as the music in this collection makes clear - is a definable set of qualities or characteristics to the music itself which would distinguish the work of female composers from the music composed by men.

This remarkable set gathers many individual recordings of music by women composers, which Brilliant Classics has quietly yet actively championed in their catalogue for decades, uniting it with exciting new outings, so that a comprehensive historical picture of the highly varied struggles and successes of women composers through the ages to our present time are chronicled and celebrated.

Other information:

- Recordings date from 1994-2024

- Booklet in English contains liner notes by Peter Quantrill

- The revival of interest in female classical composers reflects a growing recognition of their overlooked contributions to music history.

For centuries, women composers were marginalized, their works overshadowed by their male counterparts. However, recent efforts by musicians, scholars, and institutions have brought these composers into the spotlight, highlighting the richness and diversity of their compositions.

- This renewed focus stems from a broader movement toward inclusivity in the arts, challenging traditional narratives that have historically excluded women. The rise of feminist musicology has also played a key role, offering fresh perspectives on these composers' lives and works.

- This comprehensive box set offers a wide spectrum of works by female composers, from the Medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179), through the Renaissance Isabella Leonarda (baptized 1620-1704), Francesca Caccini (1587-1640) und Barbara Strozzi (baptized 1619-1677), traversing the Baroque and Classical eras, and arriving in the contemporary field, with composers such as Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) and Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969).

- A long due homage to the art and voice of female composers, spanning nearly a thousand years!

Pianist Antonio Oyarzabal continues to show us in this album that a multitude of female composers, who deserve to be known and recognized, still remain forgotten. On this occasion, he offers us a selection of pieces by 18 unique authors, most of them pianists, from different periods and geographical origins. In all cases, their professional development was hindered by their status as women and by the social pressure of the historical period in which they lived. Oyarzabal finds intense and authentic artistic stimulation in the process of researching their career paths and in the enthusiastic interpretation of their music. This second part of “La Muse Oubliée” does not intend to bring any sort of closure. On the contrary, it represents the continuation of a project as large as the number of female composers who have yet to be included…

In a follow-up to its extremely successful album Her Voice, the Neave Trio on A Room of Her Own once again champions the works of female composers. The only non-French composer on the album is Ethel Smyth whose Piano Trio, one of her earliest works, was composed in 1880. Like many of her works from this era, it shows a clear nod to the Austro-German influences of her studies in Leipzig, particularly of Brahms. Cecile Chaminade was born just a year before Smyth, and her First Piano Trio was written in the same year as Smyth’s. The Paris première was very well received by the critics, and the Trio was published a year later. Germaine Tailleferre’s Piano Trio began life in 1916 – 17 as a work in three movements, and then gathered dust for over sixty years, until a commission from France’s Ministère de la Culture, in 1978, enabled Tailleferre to revive and re-imagine it. By then in her mid-eighties, Tailleferre replaced the original second movement and added a fourth. The Trio is an excellent example of her compositional style – a voice that remained consistent though her long compositional career. Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps and D’un soir triste are perhaps now better known in their orchestral versions: this recording proves that the two pieces work equally well at either scale. As they are among the last compositions of her short life (she died of chronic illness at twenty-four), we are left to imagine what she might have written had she lived longer.

REVIEW:

These chamber works are still not in the mainstream. The Neave Trio put their case eloquently.

-- The Guardian (U.K.)

The tradition of bringing out New Year publications on January 2, “Berchtold’s Day”, goes back as far as the 17th century. Societies andguilds provided printed books, illustrations or music to the young people of the city in return for a financial contribution, which went towards the heating of the society rooms. A 2005 CD of piano music by the Winterthur composer Johann Carl Eschmann, whose documents are held in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, marked the revival of the old tradition in a new guise.
The New Year release CD 2024 brings together works by six composers, male and female, all of whom except one were born and trained in French-speaking countries. Even Paul Juon had Romanic roots, since his grandfather had emigrated around 1830 from the Swiss canton of Grisons to Russia. Short pieces have been grouped around César Franck’s Sonata in A major: composed between 1880 and 1924, all – except Ernest Bloch’s three lieder movements From Jewish Life (1924), whose Judaistic timbre became Bloch’s trademark – conform to our present-day perception of a rhapsodic fin-de-siècle sound.
The cellist Isabel Gehweiler is a prizewinner of the European Bursary for Young Artists, the Art Prize of the Art Foundation of Baden-Württemberg, the Art Prize of the Markgräfler region; she is also a recipient of grants from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the Juilliard School of Music, the Rotary Foundation, the arteMusica Foundation, the Cultural Foundation of the Saarland region, the Richard Wagner Association, the Covid-19 Grant of the City of Zurich, the Notenstein La Roche Privatbank and the Vontobel Bank. As a composer, Isabel Gehweiler has produced a body of work encompassing chamber music and orchestral compositions, which are regularly performed at international festivals.

As one of the great pianists of the 20th century, WILHELM BACKHAUS (1884–1969) needs no introduction. He recorded almost continuously from 1908 until his death, but this set, focusing on his earliest recordings, completes APR’s coverage (see also APR 6026, APR 6027 and APR 5637) of all his solo and concerto output for The Gramophone Company/HMV, except the electrically recorded Brahms titles, which are available elsewhere. These early discs reveal Backhaus as an exciting young virtuoso, rather than the sober purveyor of German classics he was to become.

In his later years, SHURA CHERKASSKY (1909–1995) was regarded as one of the last ‘Romantics’ – a throwback to the so-called ‘golden age’ of pianism in the first decades of the 20th century. As a pupil of Josef Hofmann, he had an impeccable pedigree, but we tend to forget his long career meant he was already playing and recording in that ‘golden age’. Here then are these early recordings, complete for the first time, starting in the acoustic era with the young prodigy’s 1923 Victor discs. Much of the repertoire is unique in his discography, including his only recording of chamber music – the Rachmaninov cello sonata. The Tchaikovsky 2nd Concerto, Cherkassky’s earliest concerto recording, has never previously been reissued and reveals the 36-year-old artist at his virtuoso peak.

REVIEWS:

It is a joy to have all these recordings available together. Cherkassky was a supremely gifted and communicative pianist and there is something to admire in every piece in this collection.

-- MusicWeb International

Of special note are the many Chopin pieces and a smashing performance of the Fantasy in F minor from 1950. The latter has reasonably decent sound and gives us the opportunity of hearing what Cherkassky can do with one of Chopin’s masterworks.

Outstanding in-depth notes are supplied by Jonathan Summers, and special praise must be given to Seth B. Winner for his detail about restoration techniques. No lover of the art of the piano can afford to be without this set.

-- American Record Guide

“Après un rêve” is an ode to the French Belle Époque repertoire, depicting the beauty of dreams and the night. The album is an opportunity to hear and perhaps discover rarely played / rarely recorded wonderful works (Chaminade Nocturne, Duparc Aux étoiles, Poulenc Les soirées de Nazelles), alongside central pillars of the repertoire, and includes a world premiere of Despax’s arrangement of Après un rêve. The album is attributed to his grandfather, Jacques Charpentreau, a French poet who adored this repertoire and frequently drew inspiration from the night in his works. Despax has curated some of his poetry, as well as works by other poets he admired to complement this music, taking the listener on an immersive poetic and musical journey through this noctur- nal landscape.

REVIEW:

Despax has recorded Bach, Brahms, Chopin, but the works here particularly suit his sensibility. In Maurice Ravel’s haunting masterpiece Gaspard de la Nuit, he masters the ferocious challenges with ease, delicacy, strength.

-- The Guardian (UK)

THE FUTURE is FEMALE is a three-volume series, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe and include many new commissioned works and world première recordings. Most pianists grow up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of colour. It is still standard practise to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed.

Vol. 1, In Nature, and Vol. 2, The Dance were released in 2022 to much critical acclaim. American pianist Sarah Cahill, hailed as ‘a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde’ by The New York Times and ‘instrumental in bringing to life the music of many of our greatest living composers’ by Keyboard Magazine, has commissioned and premièred over 70 compositions for solo piano. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music by the American Composers Forum.

Under the leadership of its Artistic Director, Adam Walker, the Orsino Ensemble is a chamber group of flexible formation with five outstanding wind players at its core. Each is a leader in his or her field, the group’s members committed to showcasing the depth and versatility of the wind chamber repertoire. They expand and reduce the Ensemble’s format as needed across their different programmes. This flexible approach is clearly demonstrated on this their début recording for Chandos, programming works for solo instrument through to the full wind quintet and piano needed for Albert Roussel’s Divertissement. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries bore witness to significant advances in the design and manufacture of wind instruments, much of the development driven by French makers. At the same time, the rapidly expanding Paris Conservatoire supported not only performance study, but also a vast output of original compositions by their teaching staff for the student body. The varied programme on this album captures the spirit of the age – a Belle Époque indeed!

REVIEW:

A delightful and thoughtful debut disc from the Orsino Ensemble. Supplemented by Pavel Kolesnikov’s insightful pianism, the Orsinos draw on its core quintet of leading wind players. The entire complement is heard only at the start of the disc in Roussel’s carefree Divertissement, the five wind players effortlessly interweaving, blending or stepping forward as appropriate.

– BBC Music Magazine

This new release features works for solo piano by female composers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, performed by Anna Shelest. Hailed by The New York Times as a pianist of “a fiery sensibility and warm touch,” Anna Shelest is an international award-winning pianist who has thrilled audiences throughout the world. An “effective collaborator” (The New York Times), Anna made her orchestral debut at the age of twelve with the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra, playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Since then she has been a soloist with some of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Montreal Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and Estonian National Symphony, among others. Born in Ukraine, she received her early music education at Kharkiv Special Music School. Since graduating from The Juilliard School with a Masters Degree in the class of Jerome Lowenthal, Anna has made her home in New York City with her husband and two sons.