The lost female composer we should all have heard of
The ongoing turbulence of the world may have dampened the impact of International Women’s Day in some quarters yesterday, but not on the radio. Lauren Laverne kicked off 6 Music’s All Queens All Day schedule with a rousing “We are ready for some lady time!” and a blast of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill and The Slits’ gloriously punked-up I Heard It Through the Grapevine.
Over on Radio 4, Woman’s Hour
(“Where it’s International Women’s Day every day – and has been for the past 76 years,” whooped Emma Barnett) led with an entertaining game of “Guess who’s the current Women’s Minister?” The answer, some will have been very surprised to hear, is Liz Truss. Who, perhaps understandably, was far too busy with world affairs to put in an appearance. A situation that, according to Amber Rudd, who did the job as an add-on while she was Home Secretary, only reinforced the idea that the role of Minister for Women and Equalities was “impossible” as long as it continued to be seen as a side-hustle to be tacked on to other ministerial portfolios. Go, Amber.
Elsewhere, on the Global player, Laura Whitmore’s Hear Her Voice
podcast was being heavily promoted and, on BBC Sounds, podcasts from Stacey Dooley, Cat Deeley and Edith Bowman, and Fi Glover and Jane Garvey were top of the algorithm pick list. But it is fair to say that, in terms of radio, nowhere was the flag of feminism flown with more fervour than in the world of classical music. Both Scala and Classic FM had all-day Iwd-focused playlists. And Radio 3 smashed it out of the park with a packed day of dedicated programming and live events that amounted, in real terms, to a full-on festival of female accomplishment.
It began on Monday with a Composer of the Week (Radio 3, Mon-fri) series devoted to a wonderful but sadly overlooked pianist and composer whose talent got lost in the turbulence of history. Even the omniscient presenter Donald Macleod admitted he had never heard of the 20th-century Dutch concert pianist and composer Henriëtte Bosmans before BBC Radio producer Luke Whitlock introduced him to her music.
Bosmans made for a fascinating subject. That she deserved this series’ high-minded five-hour consideration was left in no doubt from the outset, in an opener that featured extracts from her exquisite 1919 Cello Sonata and a performance of her equally impressive String Quartet of 1927. Yesterday’s edition bolstered the sense of a shamefully undervalued talent; which, in turn, made the story of her life and misfortunes all the more entrancing.
Born with “a musical silver-spoon in her mouth”, Bosmans’s stellar trajectory as a concert pianist and her burgeoning career as a composer were tragically cut short due to her Jewish heritage. In 1939, her breakthrough piece Concertino for Orchestra was performed to international acclaim; less than two years later, following the invasion of the Netherlands by the Nazis, her works were banned and she was no longer permitted to perform.
Still, she survived the war. The story of how, in 1944, she marched into Gestapo headquarters and successfully rescued her mother from a transit camp, spoke of what a redoubtable character she must have been. Bosmans’s musical legacy, which ranges from the lush late-romanticism of her early compositions to a thrilling modernism in her later pieces, certainly deserves a much wider audience. And it will get it now, thanks to Radio 3 arranging for a number of pieces – including her ravishing Violin Sonata (the UK premiere of which features in Friday’s edition) – to be recorded for this eye-opening series.
And these were not the only significant musical firsts for International Women’s Day on Radio 3. Yesterday’s live Lunchtime Concert by the BBC Singers, from London’s Temple Church, of 21stcentury works by women composers, featured no less than three world premieres, by June Nixon, Ghislaine Reece-trapp and Melissa Dunphy (whose I Am the World was composed for the occasion).
More live music followed in the evening’s eagerly anticipated Radio 3 in Concert from Kings Place in London, in which the Fieri Consort (and Professor Laurie Stras) brought us newly rediscovered madrigals – among the most important musicological finds of recent years – by the 16thcentury lutenist and composer Maddalena Casulana, alongside works by her compatriot Barbara Strozzi.
A good day by any standards for Radio 3, whose major contribution to the richness of our musical culture is too often underappreciated. And a great day for the representation and celebration of women in music, too.