Lili Boulanger

Ruth Crawford

Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatte

Carla Bley

Sounds as though Lili may be the one for you!

In addition to those you've already had, Alma Mahler would be one from the "high romantic" era that you may enjoy?

There was a whole wave of female composers in the early Italian baroque, who are worth some time: Claudia Sessa, Francesca Caccini, Lucrezia Vizzana, Leonora Duarte, Barbara Strozzi...  and several others. I would probably rate Strozzi as the most talented of them - she was certainly the most prolifically published, and appears to have lived from the financial proceeds of her works - making her the first known "commercially successful" female composer. Mostly they wrote in the stile nuovo style (aka seconda prattica in Monteverdi's terminology), and almost all of them were also the performers of their own work.


Barbara Strozzi

On that theme, many other famous opera singers also composed - Colbran, Malibran, and Viardot all had published work (mostly in the art-song genre).

In my favourite period of the English Regency, there's also Marie Hester Park, an accomplished pianist who produced songs, incidental music for the theatre, chamber music (piano trios and other works) along with a body of now-lost works of unknown genre.  (She wasn't related to either of the other "musical" Parks of the time, who were both oboists (and identical twin brothers)...  her surname came by marriage to the author Thomas Park).

Oh, I suppose someone ought to mention Hildegard von Bingen - she mustn't be omitted.  Nor should Dame Ethel Smythe for that matter.

Thank you all your swift replies, I appreciate it. Now, I'm off to buy some albums online 

I was looking for my Liza Lim disc earlier, but I can't seem to remember where I put it (not great, since it was in my hands only last Friday).

I do however know exactly where my Rebecca Saunders CD is: it's about to make the short journey from my desk to the CD player, thanks to that timely (or should I say Sudden) mention. Erm, that light-sabre pic would appear to be reproduced on p.3 of the booklet (actually p.5 by my counting, but not by Wergo's). Ollie's hair gets much shorter 9 pages later.

It is indeed the new Saunders. I believe I may be one of the first people in the UK to own a copy (I don't know whether it's been around much longer than that in Germany), although owing to a recent change in circumstances that's likely to be the last time I get a sneak preview of a Wergo disc.

The only Lim disc I have (or thought I had; I'm now wondering if I accidentally left it at work before my departure ) is/was The Heart's Ear. It didn't quite work for me the first time I listened, although I wasn't giving it my undivided attention, I'm afraid, and I haven't yet revisited it.

OoooOOhh.  When is that coming out for real in the UK, do you know?  (I do not suppose it will ever come out in the USA.  Why would it?)

two double basses sound promising indeed...

I am suitably chastened, AH

Judith Weir's been unaccountably left-out - and a fine composer she is, too.

Two more living ones from the "other end" of Europe - the Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina, and the Siberian composer Irina Belova.