Description
Peter Jacobs explores the contribution made by women composers to the genre of British piano music. Jacobs writes, 'This introduction to my CD of piano music by British women composers is being written in the spring of 2025. It seems a highly appropriate time to be doing this. Women musicians are being celebrated everywhere, with books, recordings and concerts all extolling their achievements. Women conductors are the norm and the Master of the King's Music is a distinguished woman composer. The CD you now possess is a slightly quirky, and certainly a personal offering. If you are looking for a coherent and well-structured sequence, you will be disappointed. Rather, I have dipped into my library of over 60 years' collecting and arrived at a fairly random selection of pieces, united by being rewarding to play, beautifully written for the instrument, varied in style and intellectual depth. No one idiom dominates. For example, Helen Grimes's angular and spiky Silver Moon is followed by the more relaxed cocktail bar moods of Madeleine Dring's Colour Suite. The shadows of Cecilia McDowall's Vespers in Venice leads to the innocence of Judith Bingham's Christmas Past, Christmas Present.'
