Ethel Smyth - The Prison

[Joachim Raff]

First listening of this work and its so disturbing, heart wrenching, so emotional. Only a woman could of wrote this music. It has a sensual touch/mood. I have never heard anything like it. It is upsetting me because this music was out there for decades neglected. This is definitely woman's work on a classical scale.
There are beautiful passages with glimmers of hope and then despair like no other. No question about the life experience oozing out in her music. Being a man i cannot explain it, only a woman could really fully understand what was going through her mind when composing this piece.
I love everything about this work. So different, almost a revelation of discoveries.
Forget the reviews of this work as most reviewers will be old men.
Performances are absolutely first class. Sarah Bailey is absolutely magnificent. She has an insight into the character and gives such a moving deliverance of passion and emotion.
I cannot recommend more. Its a major discovery and one of the best releases from Chandos or any other label for years. 
No longer Marvellous but Stupendous 

[Alan Howe]

Forget the reviews of this work as most reviewers will be old men

...and therefore completely wrong, of course.

Only a woman could of wrote this music

[Mark Thomas]

I'm sorry, Joachim Raff, but what a compendium of sweeping, unsubstantiated and naïve generalisations! Actually, having read the mostly negative reviews, I was much more impressed than I thought I would be by Ethel Smyth's music - she deserves kudos for sustaining interest and finding variety in a text so lacking in direction and hopelessly repetitive in mood, but it doesn't help to turn the work into some sort of feminist, ageist token. In the UK at least, Smyth was a respected, if not major, musical figure in her lifetime and has received a fair amount of attention in recent years, particularly so in the recording studio. But then I'm 69, so what do I know?

[Alan Howe]

But then I'm 69, so what do I know?

Answer: an awful lot of music that most peple have never heard of, let alone listened too.

[Joachim Raff]

Do not take it personally. It was not a slur on old folk after all I'm no spring chicken at 54 years young. 

[Alan Howe]

Do not take it personally

We didn't. It was just a daft generalisation.

[Joachim Raff]

Ignore the above review, read this one:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/aug/06/ethel-smyth-the-prison-review-brailey-burton-experiential-orchestra

IMHO it is an absolute disgrace or perhaps even scandalous that no British performing group managed to produce the first recording of this significant work. Is the music industry still so male dominated that it couldn't conceive a woman could write such a sensuous work. Perhaps the title is unfortunate, but I feel that The Prison is Ethel Smyth at the height of her powers. In fact a mistress work to be gender correct!

I totally agree. How ironic the reviewer is a woman and gave a favourable review.  Personally, I would of given 5 stars though.

[Alan Howe]

I would of given 5 stars though.

[rosflute]

Only a woman could of wrote this music. It has a sensual touch/mood.

Ethel Smyth would have been appalled by that comment. All her life she fought against such attitudes and argued [correctly] with men like Sir Thomas Beecham that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FEMALE MUSIC.

[Mark Thomas]

As a man, dare I agree with Ros? Anyone who hears "blind" the music of Smyth, Holmés, Mayer or Farrenc (to name four fine women composers at random) would never be able to identify it as "female". What tosh!

[Alan Howe]

Exactly! Well said, Ros.

[semloh]

Yes, well said. I'm sure that Ethel Smyth would have regarded it as being just as wrongheaded as the Victorian patriarchs declaring that only a man could write great symphonic music.
I haven't listened to The Prison but it obviously aspires to raise some profound issues and invoke strong responses in listeners, and for some it appears to have achieved that aim.

[Joachim Raff]

I guess some folk do not understand what Women's music is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_music

[semloh]

I don't understand the relevance of that Wikipedia item to Ethel Smyth. You're surely not suggesting that she wrote The Prison as "women's music", i.e. just for women?

[Joachim Raff]

I don't understand the relevance of that Wikipedia item to Ethel Smyth. You're surely not suggesting that she wrote The Prison as "women's music", i.e. just for women?

How dare I suggest such a thing. Holmés, Mayer or Farrenc were female composers that wrote in a strict romantic/classical style. Very little scope to say anything in their music. Just music making. Smyth's music contains alot more about her own experiences/ opinions of life. Read any biography of her life. The music lives and breathes but the beholder needs to be open to what she is saying. Dare i say its not just about the music but the message being transmitted.