When I was growing up in the 1960s, a geeky, classical music-obsessed teenager, I had heard of Ethel Smyth and her opera The Wreckers and was given the impression that she was a bit of a freak – the only female composer who ever got anywhere. It didn’t occur to me to reflect on this much and I don’t remember ever hearing a note of her music.

How different the climate is now. Women composers such as Sally Beamish, Judith Weir and many others are mainstream. We hear Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn on Radio 3 and Classic FM almost every day along with many others such as Florence Price, Emilie Mayer and Amy Beech whom few of us had encountered until quite recently.

Leah Broad’s argument is that this change has come about thanks, largely, to the work of four women who kicked, in their different ways, against the sexist prejudice and were heard: Ethel Smyth, who finally achieved a damehood and other honours, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen. Between them they span 145 years and three centuries from Ethel’s birth in 1858 to Doreen’s death in 2003.

This book is fascinating because it’s a chronological, group biography which means that Broad switches continually from one woman to another. Doreen, for example, was the child of musical parents growing up in Haddenham in the 1920s when Dorothy, who had shot to fame at the Proms in 1919 was disappointed by the reviews of her Koong Shee – a ballet based on the Willow Pattern legend. Ethel, in her sixties was struggling with worsening deafness but wrote Fete Galante. Rebecca, meanwhile, a violist was playing chamber music at the Wigmore Hall with friends including Myra Hess. And in 1922 The British Broadcasting Company launched and suddenly there were lots of opportunities in broadcast music. Broad handles these interwoven stories with unpretentious clarity so that we never lose track of who is who.

Among many unexpected things we learn that Doreen had a secret twenty year affair with her music tutor, William Alwyn. When he finally left his wife and married her, she renamed herself Mary Alwyn and suppressed her career for his. Nonetheless she was one of the first British women film score composers (Man Trap. Boys in Brown and the official film of the Queen’s Coronation).

Ethel was a colourful, tactless character and probably what we would now call “non binary” or bisexual. There were certainly passionate affairs with both men and women including Emmeline Pankhurst and Virginia Woolf. The quality and strength of her music, which largely disappeared from the repertoire for decades, is no longer in doubt. The Wreckers was performed at Glyndebourne this year and her Mass was performed at the 2022 Proms – both to huge acclaim.

Rebecca Clarke’s music is widely appreciated too, especially her viola works and how lovely to read that she eventually found married happiness with American musician James Friskin. And Dorothy Howell’s piano concerto (1923) is a delight. She composed actively for over 40 years.

It is strange and regrettable that the work of these four women tended to fall out of favour as soon as they were dead but they have undergone a renaissance and become posthumous influencers in the 21st century as Broad’s detailed and very readable book argues convincingly. If they failed to change the musical world in their own day, they are certainly doing it now.

Susan Elkin

Christmas concerts are money for jam, aren’t they? Book a venue, dig out 100 Carols for Choirs, bung in a reading or two, get the audience to sing Hark the Herald, job done. Everybody goes home happy, especially the choir treasurer.

Yes, there are Christmas concerts like that. The New Cambridge Singers concert was, on the whole, not one of them, blending old favourites with less familiar material and grouping the carols by theme, starting with four on the Virgin Mary and moving on to the Shepherds, then the Christ Child and finally Celebration. I suppose one could quibble with the title, because it was really Christmas Around Europe (though America did get a look-in with “Jingle Bells” at the end), but it was nonetheless a programme full of variety and interest.

The Downing Place URC has recently had a makeover, and now offers a bright and welcoming space for concerts and other events. The hard parquet floors, high wooden roof and bare walls however mean it has a very noisy acoustic, and certain types of music work better than others. There was not much hope for Bach’s “Ehre sei Gott” with its busy counterpoint, for instance, especially accompanied by an electronic organ distinctly lacking in bite and presence, and the same has to be said for Matthias’s “A Babe is Born”, however alert and agile choir and organist were.

On the whole it was the slower-moving pieces that worked best. Berlioz’s “Shepherds’ Farewell” was a high-point of the first half with a hushed and tender performance from the choir. The singers’ sure intonation was triumphantly demonstrated in the Willcocks arrangement of “Quelle est cette odeur”, which riskily leaves the choir unaccompanied for two verses before bringing the organ back for the coda. Pavel Chesnokov’s “O Tebe Raduyetsia” was written for just such an acoustic as this and demonstrated the choir’s sustained and well-blended tone, though I think you really need to be Russian to be able to perform this music with conviction.
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Chesnokov (1877-1944) was a new name to me, but I suspect that Simon Beattie’s setting of “Angel and Unicorn”, his own translation of a poem on the annunciation by Rainer Maria Rilke, was new to everyone. This was its second performance (you can see the first one on YouTube at https://youtu.be/hFed7Jaw7g4) and the choir conjured up a mood of hushed mystery lit up by occasional piercing dissonances. It was a very Cambridge touch that the performance was preceded by a reading of the poem in the original German, but I can’t have been the only audience member who wished that the English words had been printed in the programme.

The programme was completed by old favourites such as the Willcocks arrangements of “The Infant King” and “Infant Holy”, and the Rutter version of “Quem pastores”, all warmly and sensitively performed, though I wondered if Pearsall’s “In Dulci Jubilo” could have done with another run-through. Things were rounded off nicely with Mack Wilberg’s witty arrangement of “Ding Dong Merrily”, dextrously accompanied by Alex Robson, and a close-harmony style “Jingle Bells” by conductor Graham Walker. Oh, and “Hark the Herald” of course, so I lost at #Harkageddon (look it up) in the second week of Advent.

William Hale

This refreshing sixty minute performance neatly hooked together my two reviewing interests: music and theatre and, for the first time this year made my feel properly, glowingly “Christmassy”.

Five BPO brass players played musical interludes with Joanna McGregor (BPO’s artistic director) directing, mostly from piano while Roger Allam narrated Dickens’s most famous Christmas story. The effect was pretty magical, especially as I was at the 3pm performance so dusk was falling by the end and we could see the performers backlit by the red flushed lighting on the altar behind them.

Music was used to provide atmosphere and to mark the end of episodes. Allam’s initial entry and opening sentences were slightly overpowered by the music but the balance soon settled. His warm, resonant voice and huge stage presence is a huge asset to any show and the story telling (abridged by Richard Williams who also directed) couldn’t have been clearer. The all age audience was clearly listening attentively and laughed aloud several times.

The acoustic in the church supported the music so well that each part was clearly audible. I was delighted to notice, in particular, the tuba (John Elliot) with melodious lines at the bottom of the texture especially in Es is ein Ros entsprungen, the tune I know as “O Great and Mighty Wonder” which, in Roger Harvey’s arrangement, comes as series of sparky variations. Harvey does stirring things with the modal, minor sonority of “O Come O Come Emmanuel” in a very plangent arrangement after the Ghost of Christmas Past. The Coventry Carol with a beautiful trombone intro was a good moment too. And what a clever idea to use an arrangement of Haydn’s Gypsy Rondo (from Trio 39) for the dance music at Mr Fezziwig’s party.

Joanna McGregor, meanwhile, was adding percussion including drumming, clocks chiming and menacing soft drum sticks on piano keys as well as managing the quintet, playing piano, and composing original music for this show: an accomplished musical multi-tasker.

Allam’s cueing meant that he picked up the story in the same bar that each musical interlude ended so that there was no opportunity for applause so the narrative flowed as it should – a wise directorial decision.

I also liked John Iveson’s Carol Fantasy with which the show ended – especially the unusual harmonies in “Away in a Manger” and the “swing” element in “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”. These medleys are notoriously difficult to bring off (trust me – I’ve tried) because of the key, time signature and tempo changes. This one was almost perfect. Bravo.

Susan Elkin

Subtitled “Transfiguration”, this imaginatively programmed concert took us from Haydn to Mahler via Mozart and it was good to see emeritus conductor, Barry Wordsworth charismatically back on the podium.

Haydn’s Symphony 88 was played with vibrance from the very first note. Ruth Rogers is a very dynamic leader and exciting to watch. I particularly liked this interpretation of the largo with the melody passed from section to section and Wordsworth ensuring that we didn’t miss a single detail. For me, the tiny oboe turns in the last variation were a high spot in miniature. And I really admired the way the exuberant quavers and semi quavers were played with delicate richness in the finale along with some neat, high speed “vamp” especially from bassoons and trumpets.

In the traditional concerto slot came Carolyn Sampson singing two big Mozart numbers. Dove sono is my favourite Marriage of Figaro aria, and goodness knows there’s no shortage of competition. She sang it with lush passion and her first entry, after the orchestral minor suspension moved me to tears: a show stopper, as always. Then came Ah se in ciel, benigne stelle which is a real showpiece. Sampson’s virtuosic rendering was perfectly balanced and blended with the orchestra. Wordsworth gave Sampson all the space she needed to give us all those trills, arpeggios, leaps and runs with insouciant warmth – and of course all the splendid technical skill of a singer right at the top of her game.

Mahler 4 is a huge and pretty intense work for which the pre-interval presence on stage was expanded to include four percussionists, plus timps, four flutes, harp, contra bassoon, eight double basses and extra brass. Mahler loved col legno (tapping strings with the wood of the bow) and lower string pizzicato – all played with verve in this thoughtful performance. Rogers played the opening solo in the second movement on a smaller instrument sitting on a stand beside her – a rather wistful, thinner, higher tone. The lyricism of the third movement (which gives the more famous Adagietto from the 5th symphony a run for its money) was elegantly squeezed for every drop of emotion.

Then came the dramatic climax of the afternoon. Wordworth opened the fourth movement without a break and as it set off Carolyn Sampson wandered in very slowly and thoughtfully between the first and second violins, stopping to stare into the far distance several times as she did so. It was a perfect way to present Mahler’s magical, setting of Das himmlische Leben, which is a child’s vision of heaven – so much more evocative than having the soloist sitting stolidly on stage during the first three movements. It felt movingly fresh and of course, Sampson sang it with sweetness and beauty alongside some very nice percussion and harp work.

Susan Elkin