Following albums that explore the solo piano works of Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Nora Douglas Holt, and Betty Jackson, and an album of chamber music from the African continent & diaspora with Castle of our Skins, the performer-scholar Dr. Samantha Ege’s new recording features concertos by two trailblazing female composers of the mid-twentieth century. Julia Perry’s Concerto in Two Uninterrupted Speeds, new to the WFMT library, begins with experimental, Modern-era harmonies and irregular form in its “Slow” movement before taking off in its “Fast” movement with energetic rhythmic propulsion seasoned with syncopation, perhaps suggesting rhythms of the African diaspora. By comparison, the three-movement concerto of Doreen Carwithen, best known as a film music composer, is sweeping and romantic, with flourishes that suggest Chopin. The charismatic and entrepreneurial conductor Odaline de la Martinez, founder of the Lontano Orchestra and the Lorelt record label, is Ege’s partner for this album. Martinez has long been a champion for historically disenfranchised and marginalized voices in classical music.

I love it when an album tackles an underrepresented composer; Maestra takes on two. Doreen Carwithen, whose marriage to the more famous William Alwyn overshadowed her composing career despite having written music for over 30 (!) films, has a real gem in her extremely listenable piano concerto. Julia Perry, whose music is a recent obsession of mine, provides a characteristically modernist counterpoint in her dynamic Concerto in Two Uninterrupted Speeds.
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