Until late in the 20th century, the history of composers in classical music has been, except for a submicroscopic fraction, the history of male composers. Women had been actively discouraged, or even barred, from pursuing careers writing music, which was inherently thought to be something only men could, and should, do. But despite this obstacle, women persisted in writing music, and they’ve been doing it for 1,000 years. Here is a list of 30 essential recordings of music by women composers, most of whom have been hiding in plain sight for centuries.
The Complete Works for Piano Solo
Susanne Grützmann, piano
Clara Schumann, née Wieck, was one of the most important musicians of the Romantic era, and one of the most influential pianists and teachers in history. A prodigy who as a teenager was already a perceptive editor of the music of her future husband, Robert, composing was a natural part of her musicianship, and something she loved — but Clara’s time was constrained by family and her performing career. Her collected works for solo piano (not including her Piano Concerto), include fine early pieces like the Op. 16 Three Preludes and Fugues, and the excellent later Piano Sonata in G Minor. The quality of her compositions speaks for itself, but Grützmann has done a valuable service in bringing everything together under her capable hands. Available on ArkivMusic.
Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn
Joanne Polk, piano
How fine a composer was Fanny Mendelssohn? She wrote the Op. 8 and Op. 9 collections of songs that were published under the name of her younger brother, Felix. Her biography shows her to be every bit the virtuoso musician as he was. She was a prodigy both as a pianist and composer, but while her father famously told her that though Felix might be a professional musician, Fanny should be content with it as a hobby. Joanne Polk is a leading champion of music by women, and this cheeky album puts similar works by these siblings side-by-side. Fanny’s music is so vibrant and extroverted, so beautifully made, that one might prefer her pieces to his. Available on ArkivMusic.
The Flatterer: Piano Music of Cécile Chaminade
Joanne Polk, piano
Despite her father’s disapproval of her studying music (a running theme in this list), Cécile Chaminade was a popular pianist and composer who enjoyed an extensive career. Her songs and piano works were her finest compositional achievements — and many a piano student still plays her Scarf Dance in lessons. Chaminade’s reputation as being an “accessible” Romantic belies the sophistication, complexity, and skill of her writing, all of which come to the fore in Polk’s strong readings. The Op. 21 Sonata is especially fine, a dialogue between Lisztian melodic flourishes and counterpoint that reaches back to Bach. The whole program is a fine selection of deep works and music meant for pleasure, like Les Sylvains. Available on ArkivMusic.
Piano Music, Vols. 1–3
Kirsten Johnson, piano
Amy Beach was the great pioneer for American women composers— for all intents and purposes the first of her kind in “serious” music in this country. She initially appeared as a leading pianist, soloing in front of orchestras as a teenager. Beach’s first prominent composition was a mass, and while her large-scale music is fine, and her songs are currently her most popular works, it’s her body of piano music has a place in the American canon. Ranging from fugues and variations — her Variations on Balkan Themes is one of her most substantial creations — to character pieces, her composing is consistently imaginative and exacting, with a deep understanding of the instrument. Like Joanne Polk before her, Kirsten Johnson has a wonderful sense of touch and drama, and brings out the best in Beach. Available on ArkivMusic.
Alma Mahler: Complete Songs
Lilli Paasikivi, mezzo-soprano
Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra
Jorma Panula, conductor
Alma Mahler’s story is as complex and controversial as that of any woman in music. During an affair with the composer and teacher Alexander Zemlinsky, she met Gustav Mahler. Mahler was smitten, in part because of Alma’s musical knowledge. But after they were married, Mahler forbade her to compose. After Alma had an affair with Walter Gropius, Mahler reacted by showing more interest in her work, encouraging her to publish some of her songs. It’s not known how many songs she wrote, but 17 survive and have been orchestrated and arranged by numerous composers, including these Viennese-style orchestrations by Jorma Panula. With Lilli Paasikivi’s lustrous mezzo voice, the music stands as the work of a talented, expressive composer. Available on ArkivMusic.
Florence Beatrice Price: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 4
Fort Smith Symphony
John Jeter, conductor
Facing the double prejudice against both women and African-Americans in classical music, Florence Price wrote four symphonies that followed the example of Dvořák and his urgent advice to American composers to use the traditional material available in this country, especially from African-American culture. This is nationalist music in the best sense, with pride in the country’s possibilities. Price skillfully used European symphonic forms infused with spirituals and blues melodies — the first movement of her wonderful Symphony No. 4 blends in “Let My People Go”— and her prize-winning Symphony No. 1, premiered by the Chicago Symphony, was the first piece from an African-American woman played by a major American ensemble. The Fort Smith Symphony’s dedicated playing makes this an essential recording of American music. Available on ArkivMusic.
Ethel Smyth: Concerto for Violin, Horn, and Orchestra / Serenade
Sophie Langdon, violin
Richard Watkins, horn
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Odaline de la Martinez, conductor
Ethel Smyth’s name was in the news a few years ago, as before the opening of Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin at the Met, Smyth’s Der Wald was the only opera by a woman to have been produced at the venue (in 1903). After having to argue with her father (again!) over pursuing a music career, Smyth went on to be one of England’s most notable composers in the first half of the 20th century, and her opera The Wreckers was greatly esteemed. This caring recording from the BBC Philharmonic gives a succinct look into music that made critics uncomfortable because they felt it was too masculine for a woman — there is great strength underlying the gentle, lively sweep of the Serenade, and the Concerto for Violin and Horn opens up enormous vistas. Available on ArkivMusic.
Voglio Cantar: Barabara Strozzi / Cavalli• Cesti• Marini• Merula
Emöke Baráth, soprano
Il Pomo D’Oro
Francesco Corti, conductor
Available on Amazon
Barbara Strozzi: Primo Libro de’Madrigali (1644)
La Venexiana
Available on Amazon
Early-Baroque Venetian Barbara Strozzi’s lyrical songs, mostly for soprano voice, were out-of-the ordinary for being almost entirely secular — and Emöke Baráth is exceptional on the recording of those here, with a beautiful sound and deep understanding of and commitment to the emotional and poetic content. In an era in which writing sacred music was almost mandatory, Strozzi only produced one volume of such material. Her style brings out the beauty of the voice with a technique that is close to pure; Strozzi used far less ornamentation than her contemporaries. A singer herself, it was the sheer sound of the voice that she elevated to a high level. The book of madrigals shows her style applied to a small ensemble of voices, where her counterpoint and rhythmic energy, via the expert La Venexiana, have the earthy vitality of Monteverdi.
Marianne Martines: Il Primo Amore
Núria Rial, soprano
La Floridiana
Nicoleta Paraschivescu, conductor / harpsichord
Martines (sometimes spelled “Martinez”), lived during the height of the Classical period. Born in Vienna, her family name came from her Spanish paternal forebears. A singer and keyboardist, she made frequent appearances at the Hapsburg court, and performed keyboard music with Mozart at her own gatherings. She was apparently the first woman to compose a symphony (just one) during the era, and though not included here, the symphonic form of the three movement Overture shows a vital command of the style that Haydn, herself, and others were in the process of creating. There is speculation that many of her vocal works were written for herself, and going by the gorgeous “Sol che un instante” from Il primo amore, she was a virtuosic lyrical soprano. This album is a scintillating introduction to her work. Available on ArkivMusic.
Judith Weir: Choral Music
Choir of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
Geoffrey Webber, conductor
In 2014, Judith Weir became the first woman named Master of the Queen’s Music, an honorary title that has been bestowed by British monarchs since the Middle Ages. A British composer in the best sense, she studied her craft with Sir John Tavener and Robin Holloway, and her luminous sound is a contemporary variation on Benjamin Britten. She favors vocal and dramatic subject matter that reaches deep into the traditions of England and Scotland, from where her parents hailed. She has collaborated with Jessye Norman and Sir Simon Rattle, and has made an opera for television. No single recording can capture her breadth of style, but this is a superb collection of her choral music — her flair for drama comes through the purity of her sound and her sense of beauty, and is well-served by the Cambridge choirs. Available on ArkivMusic.
Project W: Works by Diverse Women Composers
Chicago Sinfonietta
Mei-Ann Chen, conductor
This album is but a glimpse, though a valuable one, into how women have begun to thrive in contemporary music, especially in this century. The Chicago Sinfonietta collects pieces from Florence Price, the established Jennifer Higdon, and the following generation, via Clarice Assad, Jesse Montgomery, and Reena Esmail — including her ultra-contemporary #metoo, where agitation and angst transforms itself into well-earned resolution. If there is a theme here, it’s rhythm, with dance pieces from Price, Higdon, and Montgomery’s excellent Coincident Dances. For centuries, women had to fight to prove that they could create music on the same level as men, now that the music world has been giving them more opportunities, this album is self-evident proof of what we've been missing all along. Available on Amazon.
Emilie Mayer
Symphony No. 4 / Piano Concerto / String Quartet / Piano Sonata
Ewa Kupiec and Yang Tai, piano
Klenke Quartett
Neubrandenburger Philharmonie
Stephan Malzew and Sebastian Tewinkel, conductors
Seven years younger than Fanny Mendelssohn, Emilie Mayer was a later bloomer than her contemporary — she wrote her first works in her 30s — but created a voice that was, in a way, more distinctive. Deeply dedicated to composing, in part to assuage the sorrows of family tragedy, she so strongly impressed her teacher, the great Carl Loewe, that he declared her talent unique in his experience. This collection of confident and heartfelt performances from the Neubrandenburg Philharmonia, Kleinke Quartet, and pianists Ewa Kupiec and Yang Tai, is something of a lesson for aspiring composers. Though immersed in her craft, Mayer never let arbitrary rules prevent her from expressing what she heard, whether it was pitting one rhythm against another, or moving to unexpected harmonic territory. That is the essence of style. Available on ArkivMusic.
The Women’s Philharmonic: Lili Boulanger D’un Matin de Printemps / Clara Schumann Piano Concerto in A Minor / Germaine Tailleferre Concertino for Harp and Orchestra / Fanny Mendelssohn Overture
Angela Cheng, piano
Gillian Benet, harp
The Women’s Philharmonic
JoAnn Falletta, conductor
The Women’s Philharmonic, which operated in the Bay Area from 1981 to 2004, was essential in making the case for the quality and importance of women composers. Their mission, contra the prevailing orchestral repertoire, was to play only the works of women composers. In the end, that amounted to more than 150 such artists, and the ensemble delivered over 100 premieres and commissioned several dozen new works. JoAnn Falletta was their penultimate music director, and their partnership is in great form on this album. Along with Schumann’s masterful Piano Concerto and Mendelssohn’s Overture , Germain Tailleferre (the only woman in the French composer’s group Les Six) is represented by her sparkling Harp Concertino. And it is good to have Lili Boulanger represented by her two last works. Younger sister of the legendary composition teacher Nadia Boulanger, Lili was the first woman to win the Grand Prix de Rome and sadly died from illness in 1918 at the age of 24. Available on Amazon.
Augusta Holmès: Orchestral Works
Rheinland-Pfalz Philharmonic
Samuel Friedmann and Patrick Davin, conductors
The French-Irish composer Holmès needed a masculine pseudonym to publish her first pieces during the late 19th century — she chose Hermann Zenta. She was eventually recognized for the grand sweep and energy of her music, and was commissioned to write a piece celebrating the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. She produced the Ode triomphale, calling for a mixed ensemble of 1,200 musicians! While it may be some time before anyone can mount a performance of the Ode, this satisfying survey from the Rheinland-Pfalz Philharmonic shows why she made such an impression in her era. Irlande has sinuous melodies and is full of surprising logic, Ouverture pour une comedie has an excellent dramatic form, and throughout the album there is more strength and vitality than most of the music of her contemporaries. Available on Amazon.
The Duarte Circle: Antwerp 1640
Korneel Bernolet, virginal
Transports Publics
Thomas Baeté, musical direction
Born into a Flemish musical family (and a Jewish one masquerading as Catholics), Leonara Duarte played the viol and wrote for viol consorts and ensembles that included clavichord and lute. Her surviving works amount to seven sinfonias, pieces for groups of around five musicians. Common to that era, her music was meant to be played at home. She had exquisite counterpoint skills, weaving polyphony that was gorgeous in its complexity, always moving forward, never stiff nor dense. This recording places her work alongside recognized masters Frescobaldi, Bull, Huygens, and others, and her elegant, stylish, intelligent music is a leader among peers. The wonderfully named Transports Publics emphasizes the intimate, conversational interplay in all the music on this fine album. Available on Amazon.
Joan Tower: Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman
Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop, conductor
Joan Tower is one of the most accomplished composers in the history of American classical music, and her body of work can be seen as essential in making the (unfortunately necessary) case that a woman can be as fine a composer as any man. There’s something to that in the title of Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1, one of the most rip-roaring things one will hear. Her fanfares may tweak their nose at the establishment, but the complete set is an orchestral masterpiece. Tower’s music has unerring purpose and exciting swagger, and Marin Alsop turns on all the juice for the Concerto for Orchestra. Start with this recording, then move on to her classic Petroushskates and the Grawemeyer Award–winning Silver Ladders. Available on Amazon.
Hilary Hahn plays Higdon and Tchaikovsky Violin Concertos
Hilary Hahn, violin
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Vasily Petrenko, conductor
Available on Amazon
Rainbow Body: Barber Symphony No. 1 / Copland Appalachian Spring / Higdon blue cathedral / Theofanidis Rainbow Body
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Robert Spano, conductor
Available on Amazon
Hilary Hahn’s performance of Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto in the company of Tchaikovsky’s, is, first of all, an excellent recording. Secondly, Brooklyn-born Higdon’s music stands with equal stature to one of classical music’s most beloved composers. Higdon is also a romantic, but one steeped in the shining loneliness of the American landscape, as depicted by Aaron Copland. Her balance of beauty and structural rigor has made her one of the most performed contemporary composers. She once again belongs with her peers — especially Copland and Samuel Barber — on the equally-fine album that includes blue cathedral performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra led by conductor Robert Spano.
Jeanne-Louise Farrenc: Nonet, Op. 38 / Clarinet Trio, Op. 44
Dieter Klöcker, clarinet
Peter Hörr, cello
Werner Genult, piano
Consortium Classicum
In a lifetime that spanned the first three-quarters of the 19th century, Louise Farrenc was well known as a pianist, composer, and teacher. Learning the keyboard from the likes of Johann Nepomuk-Hummel, and studying with important pedagogue and composer Anton Reicha (even though women were not allowed in the composition class at the time), she herself went on to teach piano at the Paris Conservatory — though it took the premiere of this rich Nonet, with the great violinist Joseph Joachim playing, for her to receive equal pay. The performance on this album shows the stately demeanor and expressive colors she assembled in the piece, which is on par with the great chamber works of her time. Available on Amazon
Maddelena Lombardi Sirmen: The Six String Quartets
Allegri String Quartet
Available on ArkivMusic
Listen to this album blindfolded, and one may identify it as the work of Haydn or early Mozart. Maddelena Sirmen was Venetian, and learned music at the Ospedali Grandi for orphans — she hadn’t lost her parents, but was from a poor family. Her violin and composition teacher was the renowned Giuseppe Tartini, who paid for her lessons himself. With maestra credentials she was permitted to pursue a career in music, encouraged by her violinist husband (they cowrote a double concerto). Her own 1771 Concerto on the Violin was a great success, and these string quartets, in lovely performances by the Allegri Quartet, show the poise and extroverted virtuosity of her style.
Hildegard von Bingen: Ordo Virtutum
Sequentia
Perhaps the most important and monumental woman composer in history was one of the first known classical musicians. Saint Hildegard was a deeply-learned Catholic mystic, scientist, Benedictine abbess, and the earliest known musical dramatist in the West. Ordo Virtutum is a liturgical morality play that dates from the mid-12th century, a story of the struggle over the soul between Virtue and the Devil. The Soul and the Virtues are sung by women, men sing as Patriarchs and Prophets, and the Devil is also a man, but never sings— he only yells, because Hildegard argued that the Devil cannot produce harmony, which is essentially divine. Writing in early polyphony, her own harmony was indeed divine, and Sequentia, the ne plus ultra in Medieval music ensembles, has here produced one of the great recordings in the classical music discography. Available on ArkivMusic.
O Dulcis Amor
La Villanella Basel
Solo vocal music from Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Caterina Assandra, Vittoria Aleotti, and Isabella Leonarda. Assandra, Aleotti, and Leonarda were each nuns as well as composers whose consecutive lifespans begin in the late 16th century and end, with Leonarda, in the early 18th. There is some mystery about Aleotti’s identity, whether she and Raffaella Aleotti are two different women (or, what seems most likely, the same one), and that Raffaella was her convent name. Together, they wrote highly accomplished motets and other liturgical vocal music, for solo and multiple voices. Leonarda in particular was a master of harmony, and the music of each shines in this quietly intense recording. (More on Caccini below.) Available on ArkivMusic.
Francesca Caccini: La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina
Huelgas Ensemble
Paul van Nevel, conductor
Hovering at the edges of baroque history is the name “La Cecchina,” the musician, singer, poet, and composer Francesca Caccini. Her father was a musician occasionally employed by the Medicis, and she grew up performing with him and her siblings and mother. She eventually became one of the court’s most important musicians. History records that she wrote more than a dozen dramatic works, but La liberazione is the only one so far known to have survived the ravages of time. This comic opera, which comes out of Orlando Furioso, is the first known composed by a woman. Caccini’s style is similar to Monteverdi’s, but moves away from his Madrigal sound and toward what will be heard from Bach. This live recording has an engaging intimacy. Available on Amazon.
Mel Bonis: Piano Quartets
Mozart Piano Quartet
Like George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin), Mélanie Bonis disguised her gender by changing her name, simplifying her given name to “Mel.” In a tale out of a novel, her parents forced her into marriage with a much older businessman, ending her musical life, until a chance encounter with a previous lover set her on course to write over 300 compositions. A contemporary of Cécile Chaminade and something of a protege of César Franck, her music is an exemplar of French romanticism, with rich harmonies and a sensual lyricism that is both vivid with symbolism and a pleasure in its own right. This album, with excellent performances and sound, makes an incontrovertible argument for the sheer quality of her output. Available on ArkivMusic.
Tasmin Little plays Clara Schumann, Dame Ethyl Smyth and Amy Beach
Tasmin Little
John Lenehan
Violinist Little’s album is a great complement to some of the selections above. Lest anyone think that Schumann and Beach only composed for the piano, and that Dame Smyth was mainly a symphonist or opera writer, Little shows how insightful and deep their sensibilities were for the intimacies of chamber music. Beach in particular shines here as a melodist, while Schumann’s formal means are fascinating and adventurous. Smyth’s Violin Sonata is powerful, seething with energy — Little herself is tremendous, playing with a yearning velocity. Available on ArkivMusic.
Holes in the Sky
Lara Downes & Friends
Lara Downes is a fascinating musician, bringing music of Stravinsky, Chopin, and Bernstein together with that of Billie Holiday and, in the case of this album, a panoply of the finest American women musicians across all genres. Holiday is here via a duet on “Don’t Explain,” with vocalist Leyla McCalla, and there are further duets with Judy Collins, Rhiannon Giddens and Alicia Hall Moran. The women who wrote the music include Florence Price (“Memory Mist”) and Margaret Bond (“Dream Variations”), Collins’s“Albatross,” and pieces from contemporary composers Clarice Assad and Meredith Monk. All of this under Downes touch, which is full and rounded and always meaningfully understated. Available on Amazon.
The Elena Kats-Chernin Collection
Various Artists
Too little known in the United States, Elena Kats-Chernin is one of Australia’s leading composers, with a catalogue that includes operas, orchestral music, instrumental solos, and film scores. Her work has a fascinating relationship to that of her principal teacher, Helmut Lachenmann. Where Lachenmann is a dedicated avant-gardist, Kats-Chernin has a delicate, communicative, contemporary populist sensibility — her music was used in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics. The range here is enormous, but also consistently lyrical and expressive, with rhythms one feels in the body and tunes that stick in the ear. Don’t miss her sly tribute to Scott Joplin, “Russian Rag.” Available on Amazon.
Szymanoska: Complete Dances for Solo Piano
Alexander Kostritsa
Before Clara Schumann, there was Maria Szymanowska, one of the first touring, professional pianists in Europe. At the first taste of her music, one may think of Chopin. Though she preceded her compatriot, she was a pioneer of the brillant style of pianism, pieces that called for a combination of expert agility, power, and a certain jauntiness and swagger that made the instrument ring brightly and that was as exciting to the eyes as it was to the ears — brilliant! Alexander Kostritsa brings those qualities and more to these pieces, showing Szymanowska’s compositional skill in the years before Romanticism started to shift the earth under music’s feet. Available on ArkivMusic.
Grażyna Bacewicz: Violin Concertos Nos. 1, 3 and 7 / Overture
Joanna Kurkowicz, violin Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Łukasz Borowicz, conductor
One hopes it’s true that the time will come for every fine musician, as it has for the excellent and prolific 20th-century Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. The past 10 or so years have seen a proliferation of new recordings, especially of her chamber music and concertos. There are so many terrific examples of her work that it’s a challenge to pick only one, but this set of concertos is a fine place to start. An excellent violinist herself — she was principal violinist of the Polish Radio Orchestra prior to WWII — her concertos wring everything out of the instrument; long flowing lines, angular intervals, varieties of colors and articulation. Joanna Kurkowicz is an ideal interpreter: she’s virtuosic, and a great believer in the music, able to bring out all the power Bacewicz put in. Available on ArkivMusic.
Ruth Gipps: Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4 / Song for Orchestra / Knight in Armour
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Rumon Gumba, conductor
20th century English composer Ruth Gipps was, like Clara Schumann, a child prodigy, in this case playing both piano and oboe, and she made her first professional composition at age 8. In a familiar story, her conducting and composing careers were hindered by bias against women in music, so she organized her own ensembles and went on to teach for two decades. The Op. 8 tone poem, Knight in Armour, which is included in this spacious, glowing collection, established her place in English music. Her symphonies are stirring, in the Ralph Vaughan Williams mode but with a flowing, near stream-of-consciousness sensibility that is all her own. Available on ArkivMusic.
Alice Mary Smith: Symphony in A Minor / Symphony in C Minor / Andante for Clarinet
Angela Malsbury, clarinet
London Mozart Players
Howard Shelley, conductor
Alice Mary Smith, who lived during the Victorian era, is part of the list of “first women to...”—she was the first British woman to write a symphony, the Symphony in C Minor, heard here in an expressive performance. There’s far more to the music than that ultimately frustrating distinction, as this is an elegant, lyrical work with a finely-made and commanding structure and form — the London Mozart Players are as much driven by the music as they are themselves adding life to it. The A Minor symphony is just as good, with an affecting Andante, and the clarinet Andante, as played by Angela Malsbury, is lovely. The clarity and straight-forward communication of Smith’s music stands out from the churning romanticism of her male contemporaries. Available on ArkivMusic.