Her Voice: Chamber Music by Women Composers

String quartets by women composers featuring works by Fanny Mendelssohn, Montgomery, Price, and Smyth

“Her Voice” celebrates the rich heritage of string quartet compositions by women composers from diverse historical and cultural backgrounds. Although the fiercely passionate and rhapsodic string quartet by Fanny Mendelssohn was never publicly performed during her lifetime, it stands as one of the earliest surviving romantic string quartets by a woman composer. Strum is a vibrant one-movement work drawing on American folk idioms and dance by living American composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery. The first and unfinished string quartet in G major by Florence Price, the first African-American woman to have her work performed by a major American orchestra, is alternately peaceful and hymnal, yet vibrant and impassioned. The first quartet by Dame Ethel Smyth, an English composer and dedicated suffragist, is full of fiery intensity and raw energy, yet also introspection and lyrical beauty.