Brilliant Women… No. 1

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and… If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been curious about classical music… or explored it for a while once upon a time… or just quietly wondered what all the fuss was about… then this is the podcast is for you. And because there’s a lot of music out there each episode has something of a theme. And this one is going to feature classical music written by women.

One of the things I’m enjoying about making this podcast is playing you music you might not know …but even more selfishly… discovering great music that I don’t know. And in recent years music written by women has at long last begun to be commissioned, programmed, performed, recorded, discussed, reviewed, studied, and celebrated. And of course, most importantly, written… in greater and greater numbers.

Last time I checked women account for half the planet’s human population and if this podcast is called ‘Classical For Everyone’ then perhaps the music should be from ‘everyone'. So, even though I’ve scattered some wonderful music written by women through earlier episodes of the podcast, there is now so much great music available in great recorded performances, it feels like it could be time for the men to make just a little more room on the turntables.

And a quick word about the title of this episode. The record company ‘Brilliant Classics’ has recently released a 25 CD box set of music written by women they have recorded or licensed over the last couple of decades … called simply ‘Female Composers’. With my plan to build up a more than decent CD library before the format goes the way of the 78 and the landline, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. And it is filled with amazing music. Much of it by composers entirely new to me. And I’ll be featuring music from the set in this and future episodes. And as a tribute to the work of the company, and to use an entirely accurate adjective, I’m calling the series ‘Brilliant Women’.

So I invite you to join me listening to a bit over an hour of music spanning almost three and  a half centuries… from 1690 to 2015. Music from… Jennifer Higdon, Isabella Leonarda, Maddalena Sirmen, Fanny Mendelssohn, Mel Bonis, Ida Presti, Anna Clyne and Elena Kats-Chernin.

I’m going to bet that if you are still listening to this episode you have an open and enquiring mind and I have a feeling you are going to be amply rewarded by the work of these Brilliant Women.

First up… I’m going to start with something from the 21^st century. The American composer Jennifer Higdon’s  ‘Concerto for Viola and Orchestra’ premiered in 2015 and was written for her colleague Roberto Diaz from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where Higdon had studied and taught. Here is the third and concluding section. It is about nine minutes long and in this recording, which incidentally won a Grammy award, the dedicatee Roberto Diaz is the soloist and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero.

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That was the third section of Jennifer Higdon’s  ‘Concerto for Viola and Orchestra’. Roberto Diaz was the soloist and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero.

So the viola you heard Roberto Diaz playing in that recording was made in about 1690 in Cremona in what is now Italy by Antonio Stradivari… better known today as Stradivarius. By the way I doubt that many people in the lovely city of Philadelphia know what a gem of an instrument, worth about 30 million dollars, is sitting in their midst at the Curtis Institute… where Diaz is now the CEO.

Anyway, whilst Stradivarius was turning pieces of maple and spruce and willow into the magical instrument you just heard… about one hundred miles to the northwest in the town of Novara residing in a convent as she had from the age of 16, was Isabella Leonarda… who by now was the abbess. In her limited spare time she was also a prolific composer writing over 200 works. There is a sad similarity between the lives of many early female composers. It was only by leading cloistered lives that they were able to get any education at all and more importantly the opportunity to compose music. Though maybe it can be argued that in the 1600s life in a convent might have been better than many of the other possibilities.

Here is Isabella Leonarda’s 9^th Sonata published in 1693. It is in four parts and is about five minutes long and is performed by the Capella Artemisia directed by Candace Smith.

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That was Isabella Leonarda’s 9^th Sonata published in 1693. It was performed by the Capella Artemisia directed by Candace Smith.

In the Republic of Venice in the 1700s, there were four famous religious institutions called ‘Ospedale’. Originally established for particular groups of the ill, distressed and abandoned they also became places where children of impoverished nobility could receive an education. And with the need for music to accompany the church services, training as singers and instrumentalists became a key part of that education. So much so that people now see the ‘ospedales’ as precursors of today’s conservatories.  The most famous was the Ospedale della Pieta as it was there that a priest by the name of Antonio Vivaldi directed the orchestra and wrote some quite popular music.

But about a twenty minute walk north was the Ospidale della San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti. And it was here that, at a very young age, possibly around 1755 when she would have been ten years old, Maddalena Lombardini was sent for food, board and an education.

She turned out to be a prodigy, teaching violin in the ospidale by the time she was fourteen and then being dispatched to Padua to take advanced lessons from the composer and virtuoso Giuseppe Tartini. On her return to Venice she was faced with a common dilemma. The choice was between joining the church as a nun or leaving to become someone’s wife.

So at the age of 23 Maddalena Lombardini married Ludovico Sirmen. It can’t be a coincidence that he was a fine violinist as well. In fact the two of them would go on to tour Europe extensively as a performing duo including three trips to London. And, she was a composer. Whilst Josef Haydn is often thought of as the ‘father of the string quartet’, the combination of two violins, a viola and a cello, it was a form that evolved over decades... And Maddalena Sirmen, as she is generally known today, published a set of string quartets at the age of 25 in 1771, less than ten years after Haydn published his very first attempts.  Here is the second part of her 3^rd String quartet. It is performed by the Allegri Quartet and is about 5 minutes long.

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That was the second part of Maddalena Sirmen’s 3^rd String quartet. It was performed by the Allegri Quartet. I hope you are enjoying this ‘Brilliant Women’ episode of the Classical For Everyone podcast. Time to leave Italy and head to northern Europe and leap forward a few decades.

The composer Fanny Mendelssohn was in some ways luckier than most women of the early 1800s who may have aspired to writing music. She grew up in a tolerant, progressive household where she was encouraged to explore her gifts and she would write over 125 pieces for piano… and even more songs. But her reputation was eclipsed by that of her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, who whilst being supportive of her, could do little to promote her work as even the concept of a ‘woman composer’ practically did not exist. Only a very small amount of her work was actually published in her lifetime and some of it ended up under the name of her brother. That plus what can be generously called casual misogyny in fact meant that until only a couple of decades back, one of her major compositions for solo piano, her Easter Sonata from 1828, was incorrectly attributed to Felix. It is a great piece and here is just the fourth section which was given the Italian subtitle ‘allegro con strepito’… meaning ‘fast with rumbling’. It is about 8 minutes long and is played here by Gaia Sokoli.

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That was Gaia Sokoli playing the fourth section of Fanny Mendelssohn’s ‘Easter Sonata’.

One of the issues I’ve come to ponder researching this episode is that, of the recordings of music by women composers available, the vast majority is for solo instruments or small groups. So I think two things are at work here. In the first instance it is a lot cheaper to make a recording of a piano trio than an orchestra. But more significantly, when a woman did achieve the opportunity to compose, the doors to the popular heart of the classical music world… to symphonies and concertos.. were largely closed to her. But that does not mean there were not exceptions and in France, probably around 1909, the composer Mel Bonis wrote a symphonic cycle for orchestra now known as ‘Women of Legend’. But it was almost certainly never performed in her lifetime and the score was only published in 2018. For which we must be thankful. But still… Here from that group of compositions is ‘The Dream of Cleopatra’. It is about 8 minutes long. And it is performed here by the National Orchestra of Toulouse conducted by Leo Hussain.

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That was ‘The Dream of Cleopatra’ by Mel Bonis. It was performed by the National Orchestra of Toulouse conducted by Leo Hussain. One of the ways that women have for a long time made a career in the classical music world has been as instrumental performers. Whilst composition was essentially a boys’ club in a castle, with a moat, and crocodiles… women were to an extent welcome as performers. And some of them would find a way to work as composers writing music for themselves to perform. One such figure was the French guitar virtuoso Ida Presti. She gave her first public concert at the age of 10 and at 24 she was the soloist in the French premiere of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. And after marrying fellow guitarist, Alexandre Lagoya, they became a world-famous guitar duo through the 1950s and 1960s. And during this time she wrote a large amount of music for two guitars. Here are the guitarists Salvatore Fortunato & Fabio Perciballi with one of the pieces she wrote. It is about 8 minutes long. Here is ‘The Hungarian Woman’ by Ida Presti.

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That was ‘The Hungarian Woman’ by Ida Presti performed by the guitarists Salvatore Fortunato & Fabio Perciballi.

I’m going to finish this episode with two more works by contemporary composers. There is a nice quote on the United Nations web page dedicated to gender equality… It is the first sentence… ‘Women and girls represent half the world’s population and, therefore, also half its potential’.  And it would be wrong to in any way diminish the obstacles that remain but in the first world things things have improved and some of that potential the United Nations refers to is being realised. Which means even more amazing music for us all. Speaking of which… I’m going to play you ‘Within Her Arms’ by Anna Clyne who was born in London in 1980 and is now one of the most in-demand composers working today. She wrote the 13 minute long ‘Within Her Arms’ in 2009 in response to her mother’s death and I’m not going to add much more except to say that it’s been a while since I’ve heard anything that seems to capture grief and love so well. It is written for fifteen solo string instruments and here is Marin Alsop conducting players from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

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That was ‘Within Her Arms’ by Anna Clyne performed by Marin Alsop conducting players from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to the ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. I have another couple of pieces coming up but before I get to them I want to give you a little information that I hope you find useful… If you would like to listen to past episodes… or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net. That address again is classicalforeveryone.net. And on the individual episode pages of the website there are links to Spotify playlists with the full versions of most of the music played in each of the episodes. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net.

Alright, to finish this episode of Brilliant Women I have something I think is really delightful and has a good story to go with it as well. It is an orchestral work from 2013 called ‘Dance of the Paper Umbrellas’ by the Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin. It was written for an organisation called the Hush Foundation, which was developed by Dr. Catherine Crock in Melbourne, Australia to create CDs of music to help reduce stress and anxiety felt by patients and families in hospitals. I’ll put a link to The Hush Foundation on this episode’s page on the website in case you are interested.

Kats-Chernin wrote in her program note for the premiere performance of the work: "The idea for it started when I visited the leukemia ward at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne and witnessed what wonderful work Dr Crock and her team do. I wondered what kind of piece I could write that would be uplifting. I wanted to enter the world of magic and dreams. I imagined a cake adorned with multi-coloured umbrellas."

Here is the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Northey with Elena Kats-Chernin’s ‘Dance of the Paper Umbrellas’.

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That was the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Northey with Elena Kats-Chernin’s ‘Dance of the Paper Umbrellas’.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.

This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little more music for you. Here is the slow section of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Easter Sonata for Piano from 1828. And it is performed by Gaia Sokoli.  Thanks again for listening.