This week, the spotlight is on exciting new releases by female musicians and composers. The debut album from New Zealand-born American violinist Geneva Lewis features a high-flying program, accompanied by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra led by Gemma New. Violinist and composer Esther Abrami presents her own large-scale work: a nine-part suite for violin and orchestra exploring love in all of its forms. Saxophonist and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Jess Gillam releases an album spanning 900 years of uplifting music, while the Pacifica Quartet features new works by Gabriela Lena Frank and Jennifer Higdon among other American composers. The Brandenburg State Orchestra, led by Ernst Theis, presents works by 19th century German composer Luise Adolpha Le Beau. Last, but certainly not least, Lyric Opera of Chicago, under the baton of Enrique Mazzola, releases the recording of a striking new opera by Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek.
New Releases October 13: Women in Classical Music
The final album in Pacifica Quartet’s three-part The American Collection series brings together touchstones of the American repertoire. The release features some of the most canonical American chamber works, including Samuel Barber’s String Quartet, Op. 11 with its beloved Adagio movement; George Walker’s Lyric for Strings; and George Crumb’s Black Angels; plus, world-premiere recordings of newly commissioned works by Gabriela Lena Frank and Jennifer Higdon. Frank’s The Edge of Everything: Elegy for Rachel Louise Carson pays tribute to the eponymous environmental pioneer. Higdon’s Steps for Justice is a portrait of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Both works are narrated by NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.
In her latest album, celebrated violinist and composer Esther Abrami presents her own large-scale work, a nine-part suite for violin and orchestra exploring love in all its forms. The Amour Suite captures the full spectrum of emotions, from tenderness and passion to longing and heartbreak, and is the centerpiece of a program that blends original music with new arrangements of music on the same theme of love with City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of conductor Irene Delgado-Jiménez. Highlights include Eric Carmen’s All by Myself, the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen, Poulenc’s Les chemins de l’amour, Désillusion amoureuse from Charlie Chaplin’s film The Circus, and the Love Theme from Nino Rota’s Romeo and Juliet featuring mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti.
New Zealand-born American violinist Geneva Lewis is the recipient of a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has been Musical America’s New Artist of the Month, and was a BBC New Generation Artist in 2022–24. Her solo debut album features a high-flying all-American program, accompanied by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra led by Gemma New. Starting with Samuel Barber’s neo-Romantic Violin Concerto – the notorious finale provides hardly any respite to the soloist – it is followed by the first recording of John Zorn’s Partita for the Firebird, a solo violin work in which “every note burns and demands your entire self” (Geneva’s own words), and Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Written to please his father, the work is less symphonic than operatic, befitting a composer then in the full flight of operatic composition.
Lyric Opera of Chicago, under the baton of Enrique Mazzola, presents The Listeners, a striking new opera by Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill. The work unfolds within a community bound together by circumstance and belief, shaped by the unsettling presence of an unexplained “hum” that blurs perception and reality. Through Mazzoli’s richly textured orchestral writing and Vavrek’s incisive dramaturgy, the opera becomes a powerful reflection on vulnerability, tenderness, rage, and hope, all sung into existence with a haunting sense of optimism. The cast is led by soprano Nicole Heaston as the high school math teacher Claire Devon, tenor Jonas Hacker as Claire’s student Kyle, bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen as Howard, the leader of a cult called the Listeners, and mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack as Angela, Howard’s right hand woman.
Luise Adolpha Le Beau remained undeterred by the headwinds of the male-dominated world of classical composers. Born in Rastatt, Baden, as the only child of an officer with a passion for the arts and his wife who was no less artistically inclined, Le Beau benefited from a music education from an early age. She was later studied privately with Joseph Rheinberger which led to a steady expansion of her compositional output and widespread recognition of her works. The Brandenburg State Orchestra led by Ernst Theis presents Le Beau’s spring-like Overture, Op. 23, and two fully-fledged orchestral works: the Symphony, Op. 41, and the Piano Concerto, OP. 37 featuring soloist Oliver Triendl.
Of her latest album, saxophonist and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Jess Gillam says, “I had one ambition with this project: to make an album that would make people smile. I wrote down an album manifesto about a year ago and it simply said: BIG ENERGY. BEAUTY. MUSIC TO MAKE PEOPLE SMILE. MUSIC TO LIFT PEOPLE UP.” Spanning 900 years of music, the electrifying and diverse album repertoire captures the energy and eclecticism of Jess’s musical upbringing and tastes, as well as her live shows. The program bridges genres seamlessly, from classical, folk, classic art pop, jazz to ambient, with saxophone-forward arrangements of music by CPE Bach, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Hildegard of Bingen, and more.
