Glass: Violin Concerto No. 2 "The American Four Seasons" & Violin Sonata

From Sappho of Mytilene to Kaija Saariaho and Clara Schumann, several women have managed to break through the macho codes of the milieu and become composers. While the classical music landscape has been largely dominated by men in recent centuries, the work of their female colleagues, whether pioneers or contemporaries, is just as fascinating. Here we put eleven undervalued figures of female composition in the spotlight.

Somewhat overshadowed today by his compatriots Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov, Alexander Scriabin is nonetheless a key figure in Russian music. At the beginning of the 20th century, the composer and virtuoso pianist broke away from the Romantic legacy to offer a unique and innovative musical language which no one would follow. His work, deeply influenced by mystical philosophy and synaesthesia, would undergo a dazzling evolution in barely two decades, interrupted by his premature death at the age of 43.

As a proper manifesto of French romanticism, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique marked the 19th century as much as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring impacted the 20th. Composed in Paris − which at the time was a global crucible for artistic creation − these two masterpieces catapulted musical language into another dimension. On December 5th, 1830 the revolutionary work of 27-year-old Hector Berlioz deeply moved the musicians present in the small room of the old academy of music, among whom were Meyerbeer and Liszt, who were impressed by the extraordinary audacity of this piece presented just three years after Beethoven’s death.