From the organiser’s website:
Ladies’ Night – “The Freedom of Women…”
“The fact that one’s miserable feminine nature is advanced every day, at every step of one’s life, by the masters of creation, is a point that could drive one into a rage and thus deprive one of femininity, if it were not for the fact that this would make the evil worse” wrote Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn in a letter on 22 March 1829.
One could almost think that Fanny Hensel was commenting on the concert practice of today’s great stages. How many orchestral concert evenings in large houses, how many classical music programmes do we experience and have we experienced, whose programmes were and are as a matter of course shaped exclusively by a sequence of works by male composers.
In return, we would like to create a concert evening with orchestral music by women only. We would like to make audible to our audience the wonderful works created by women composers in the 19th century, hidden behind Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, Wagner, Berlioz etc.. Created against all odds by fathers, husbands, teachers, institutions and competitors. We would like to draw attention to the women composers who made interesting contributions to the development of music in the 20th century, but who are rarely or never performed on the concert stage today.
Program:
Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) – Overture in C Major
Germaine Tailleferre (1892 – 1983) – Concertino for harp and orchestra
Florence Price (1887 – 1953) – Adoration
Emilie Mayer (1812 – 1883) – Symphony No. 1
Soloist: Lili Vanryne, harp
Conductor: Markus Fohr