New BBC Radio 3 project : Female composers

[Simon]

Interesting new project, we might hear some unexpected masterpieces by female composers in the next few years thanks to BBC Radio 3. Finding the music could be a challenge though. I read 10 years ago Florence Launay's book "Les compositrices en France au XIXe siècle", and many works by these female composers were presumed lost, unfortunately. Launay's website includes a list of major works still missing http://www.compositrices19.net/alaide.html

Read more here about the BBC project :

http://www.gramophone.co.uk/blog/gramophone-guest-blog/we-want-to-champion-women-composersbut-there-arent-enough-recordings-to

Any suggestions? Or does anyone here know a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council? Who knows how much we could influence the choices made!

[eschiss1]

The phrasing doesn't make clear that not everything by Héritte-Viardot's gone missing- and of course there's at least the 3 items @ IMSLP for instance, including two substantial-looking quartets... (agreed about relative lack of recordings.)

[Simon]

The phrasing doesn't make clear that not everything by Héritte-Viardot's gone missing- and of course there's at least the 3 items @ IMSLP for instance, including two substantial-looking quartets

Eric, maybe not everything, but according to Launay, 300 works! What would we really know of Chopin, Brahms or Tchaikovsky if such a large part of their musical output were to be missing?

[eschiss1]

Perhaps it has, as it has Bach's

[Gareth Vaughan]

I am sorry to be negative, but my experience of BBC Radio 3 gives me little confidence that anything groundbreaking will emerge. Most of the presenters are clueless when it comes to the sort of music we discuss on this forum. Miss Wolstencroft would be better off consulting members of this forum than the underfunded, overstretched and often (perhaps consequently) uninspired AHRC.

[eschiss1]

I was quite pleased with one of their rebroadcasts recently (unusual 20th century French and English music), but I won't deny they've been better even in my lifetime. That they're still better than most stations in the US so far as I know probably just says something about the latter and maybe about, too, the increasing competition to all these stations from other, less original but more free-choice sources.