Female composers’ long-lost masterpieces to take centre stage

ONE is best-known only as Stravinsky’s piano teacher. Others are barely known at all.

From this year, the names of five female composers whose work has been all-but lost to history will at last become British household names.

The BBC has announced the names of five “forgotten” women whose work they will now record and broadcast: Leokadiya Kashperova, Marianna Martines, Florence Price, Augusta Holmès and Johanna Müller-hermann. In some cases, their compositions will be heard for the first time in a century; others will be played in public for the very first time.

Alan Davey, controller of BBC Radio 3, said it was “incredibly exciting” to “shine a light” on the composers, explaining: “It means that we are not only expanding the canon of classical music, but also actually helping to redress its historic imbalance when it comes to gender and diversity.”

The five women include a Viennese prodigy, the first woman to have an opera premiered in Paris, and an Africanamerican composer who played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the Thirties. They were identified as part of a project to seek out previously lost, forgotten or little known female composers, and make their work available to perform.

A selection of their pieces have been recorded by the BBC orchestras and choirs, to be played first on Radio 3 on March 8, International Women’s Day.

Davey said: “It’s incredibly exciting to think that, in many cases, this is the first time these works will have been heard in 100 years. Or even the first time they will ever have been performed.”