Concerto Etudes and Toccatas by 19th and 20th Century Women Composers CD - Sheet Music

SKU: FV.FUE-7017

ISBN SAL 7017.

Most of the works selected for this CD being representative of their respective authors, this recording can be considered as a kind of musical portrait gallery of women female piano composers of eastern and western origin, whose works are an enrichment to international piano literature. The polish composer Maria Szymanowska-Wolowska (1789-1831), whom Goethe admired and to whom he dedicated a poem, was a highly inspired composer. About 135 years later, the piano music composed in Poland sounds cooler and more severe. Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969), one of the most striking artistic personalities among contemporary female composers constituted what came to be known as the Polish School. Unfortunately the Warsaw musician Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) who composed in the tradition of Chopin and became famous as the rediscoverer and pioneer of the harpsichord, gave up composing piano music much too early. Along with many lieder, the Norwegian pianist and composer Agathe Backer-Grondahl (1847-1907), whose work displays harmonic characteristics comparable with Edvard Grieg's, created primarily small-format works such as character and dance pieces in the style of Scandinavian national Romanticism. Up to the present day, little research has been done and, therefore, little is known about the biographies of a number of female composers: One example of this is the Austrian Maria Hofer (1894-1977) whose biography is almost completely unknown. The lied-like Etude in A flat major, composed around 1830 by Clara Schumann-Wieck, probably the best known female composer of all, already points to the individual and original tone of her later romances and lieder. Out of the substantial oeuvre left by the Parisian pianist and composer Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944), the Concertino op. 107 for flute and piano (or orchestra) stands out as her most widely played work, known throughout the world. However, the many piano pieces deserve no less attention, and, indeed some of them are particularly interesting as far as their position in the history of music is concerned.