The rediscovery of lost music by women is proceeding apace, and perhaps the most striking thing about it is that once a new group of composers has been explored a bit, more emerge. This miscellany of female-composed works from pianist Marie-Catherine Girod contains a few of the standards -- Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach -- but much of the music here will be new even to listeners who have made a point of exploring the field. There are two works, by Hélène de Montgeroult and Emilie Zumsteeg, that Chopin might ...
Read More
The rediscovery of lost music by women is proceeding apace, and perhaps the most striking thing about it is that once a new group of composers has been explored a bit, more emerge. This miscellany of female-composed works from pianist Marie-Catherine Girod contains a few of the standards -- Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach -- but much of the music here will be new even to listeners who have made a point of exploring the field. There are two works, by Hélène de Montgeroult and Emilie Zumsteeg, that Chopin might easily have known and emulated. Many will not have known that Louis Moreau Gottschalk had a composer sister, much less that she wrote an entertaining Staccata Polka that can compete with her brother's works even if it lacks the Afro-Caribbean element. Several of the most obscure pieces are from the 18th and early 19th centuries, but the Six Preludes of composer Henriëtte Bosmans are admirably concise neoclassic essays in a style all their own and hardly known. Ethel Smyth's Variations...
Read Less
