Following on from her splendid ‘The Piano: A History in 100 Pieces’, celebrated pianist and writer Susan Tomes now turns her attention to that oft-neglected corner of classical music history – women pianists.
Focussing on 50 women pianists – some well-known (Louise Farrenc, Fanny Mendelssohn, Nadia Boulanger, Tatiana Nikolayeva, for example), others less so, or only recently discovered – Susan Tomes traces the lives and music-making of these women across the piano’s history, from the development of the piano in the 18th century to the present day.
As Tomes points out in her introduction, the piano is “an instrument that anyone can play, irrespective of gender”, yet until fairly recently, women pianists and composer-pianists, were overlooked, under-represented in concert programmes and recordings, and generally consigned to the background in classical music history.
In some ways, the reasons for this are simple: women pianists lacked access to formal music training, were excluded from performances opportunities, and were even at a disadvantage to men due to the size of the instrument, the piano’s keys being designed for men’s typically larger hands. Additionally, women often had significant obligations to the home and family. And yet despite these limitations, women continued to play, perform and compose their own music.
Pioneers in a number of ways, women pianists carved their own paths within a male-dominated profession. They travelled independently, helped to shape the modern piano concert as we know it today, including playing from memory (Clara Schumann), performing cycles of complete works (Wanda Landoswka/Bach’s Goldberg Variations), premiering new works and reviving historical works, bringing lesser-known and rare repertoire into concert programmes and recordings, and commissioning new music. They were involved in recording, broadcasting, presenting TV programmes about music, creating educational initiatives, devising concert series….and much more – all against a background of at best half-hearted support, at worst antagonism, resentment and open sexism.
These enterprising women, 50 of whom are presented in this book, helped to expand and diversify the profession, gradually debunking the notion that the male approach to a career as a concert pianist was not the only way. These women were not imitators of male pianists, but artists in their own right, with their own musical integrity, authority and identity.
This highly readable, meticulously researched and elegantly crafted book takes a chronological approach, beginning with French keyboard player Anne-Louise Boyvin d’Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy and ending with Nina Simone, jazz pianist, singer and civil rights activist. For each woman pianist featured, the author gives biographical details, notes their significant performances, recordings or compositions, and demonstrates how they have each contributed to the world of the piano.
The introductory chapters explore some of the reasons why women were sidelined, including social mores and prejudices, and how men became ascendent in the profession. The closing chapters examine where we are today with regard to female musicians, including the effect of equal rights legislation, the rise of piano competitions, shifting attitudes within the profession and audience perceptions, and the influence of teachers. For this section of the book, Susan Tomes spoke to a number of female pianists working today to reveal some surprising insights, and the barriers and limitations which women still face today in a highly competitive global profession.
At a time when the current discourse in classical music – and indeed in society in general – is focussed on equality and inclusion, this book is a valuable contribution to the debate and a rich celebration of the essential role of women in the history of classical music and the piano in particular.
‘Women and the Piano: A History in 50 Lives‘ is published byYale University Presson 12th March 2024
Isn’t it time all those piano boys stopped getting it all their own way? (Not that we don’t love ‘em!) From Bach to Ben Folds, from Beethoven to Billy Joel and from Mozart to Minchin, the list of famous piano players throughout history is dominated by men. I’m premiering my new show “The Piano Women” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to start redressing this imbalance… and have some piano fun as well.
I’m Emma Knights, from Adelaide, South Australia. At the keyboard since the age of four, I now work as a musician, pianist, producer, composer, creator and curator. The purpose of my lightning visit to the U.K. this time is to perform this new one-woman show, as well as bringing back “The Piano Men”, a show which I performed successfully at Edinburgh last year.
Both shows have been directed by Adrian Barnes. I’m on a mission to share the inspiring and entertaining stories of piano men and piano women across history. Researching and preparing these shows has taught me a lot about us pianists. Here’s a bit about my journey so far, and how these two shows came into existence.
My first piano hero was my dad. He was my piano teacher and he’s still the pianist I admire the most. As any pianist knows, achieving musical mastery as piano player is tough. Early on, I found that professional piano playing is a bit of a man’s world. I spent my early career in the background, very much the genteel piano girl. Those restaurant, cocktail bar and pub gigs – ‘Don’t play too loud, will you?” Then a guy with boogie woogie chops comes in, plays a few splashy numbers, and they fire me. What’s that all about? I can play boogie. Of course I can. Want to see my bunch of qualifications in classical and contemporary music at graduate level? But somehow all that sweaty, muscular jazz and rock wasn’t ladylike.
So I used to stay in the background… I was The Nice Accompanist Lady. I worked as a pit instrumental muso. Now don’t get me wrong; I have enjoyed every minute of professional piano playing, and I’m grateful for all opportunities that have come my way.
My creativity was being quietly stifled until a singer friend of mine asked me to accompany her original cabaret. As we rehearsed, she talked about
the opportunities I had provided her as a performer. She spoke about those internal struggles common to all artists: Will I get an audience? Am I ready to give an audience of my best? You know, those questions beautifully explored in the film “La La Land”. I started to think more about myself as a performer, not just a producer and promoter. I’m an artist too… and while I’d been busy enabling so many other artists to perform, I had allowed my little artistic spirit to fade a bit. So I started to take some baby steps.
I got a gig as accompanist for a two-woman comedy cabaret. Nothing new there. But their show was written so that the accompanist was one of the characters… and what a grumpy, unimpressed, purist musician I played! When the bell from a 1920’s gramophone fell onto my head during one performance, it was the comic hit of the night.
Next, a job as once-a-week rehearsal pianist for a 100-strong choir. On the day they put the choral arrangement for “Shake, rattle and roll” on the music stands, I thought… “If there’s ever going to be a safe space for me to bring my rock and roll licks, this is it!” The choir went off like a rocket, and this is still their favourite request whenever I am rostered on. I was starting to stick my quiet little piano-lady neck out.
Around this time, I watched Hannah Gadsby’s show “Nanette”, in which she memorably says “My story has value.” I realised that mine does, too, so I started writing “The Piano Men”, a one-woman show about my work as a female pianist. While delving into the history of a few other piano women, the show tells its story through the songs of my favourite piano men. I believe passionately in equality. Consequently, this show is all about where we can still improve the system (whatever that is!) for piano women without diminishing the works of the many piano men that have inspired us all.
I premiered that show in Edinburgh Fringe last year; it was still at an embryonic stage. Despite this, I received a 3-star review and excellent feedback. So I went back home to Oz and hired an award-winning director, Adrian Barnes, to help me bring the show to a whole new level. Next, I toured it to two states, and I’m extra-happy to be bringing this new, improved version of “The Piano Men” back to Edinburgh, where it all began.
An inevitable by-product of all the research I did for “The Piano Men” was a stack of fascinating information about some of history’s great female pianists. Discovering all those crazy coincidences, fun factoids and irresistibly silly stories meant that I simply had to create a partner show called… wait for it… “The Piano Women”. Both are stand-alone shows, but any piano nutter would want to see both.
Although “The Piano Women” has a little of my story within it, it’s mostly piano solos, songs and entertaining stories about women pianists throughout history, from the invention of the piano to today. Sadly, not all of them could be honoured in a one-hour show. (Watch for my podcast, coming soon!) I have had a truly mind-expanding time researching all these women who share with me an irrational passion for the piano. I was also surprised to find out how many of them there were. History has certainly not made much fuss about the world-wide Keyboard Sisterhood. I believe that “The Piano Women” carries messages of inspiration for any musician who sees it, as well as shining a light on the inner workings of the music industry over the last three centuries.
Pianodrome, Edinburgh
When I researched likely venues for the Edinburgh Fringe this year, I chose the beautiful Stockbridge Parish Church, complete with its grand piano. And my other venue was a no-brainer… the Pianodrome, a 100-seat amphitheatre constructed from over 50 discarded pianos. What wonderful upcycling! For my shows about pianos, I couldn’t imagine a more immersive setting anywhere in the world. Back home (Adelaide, South Australia) I devise and run immersive music-based events; to be able to do this with my shows in Edinburgh is amazing!
I hope you can get to see one of my shows in Edinburgh this year. If you do, stay back after and say “G’day!” to me. We pianists have to stick together.
The Piano Women
One World Premiere show only:
Thursday, 8th August, 2019 – at 5:00pm
Pianodrome at the Pitt, Pitt Street Market, Edinburgh
The Piano Men
Saturday, 10th August, 2019 – at 5:00pm
Pianodrome at the Pitt, Pitt Street Market, Edinburgh
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and make it your career?
I started at the piano as a toddler and simply never stopped! I just never found anything I loved as much. In my teens, I had passing fantasies about being an archaeologist or an actor “when I grew up”, and then I realized that I could incorporate aspects of both of those careers into my musical path. My work involves a lot of archaeological excavation of the repertoire in search of historical narrative and context, and I think that I channel my inner actress into the task of interpreting the emotions and messages of the composers whose works I perform.
Who or what were the most important influences on your playing/composing?
It’s been a collage of many things: my very first teacher, Maria Cisyk, was my first love! She was a wonderful woman who integrated a true understanding of and curiosity about music into the first steps at the piano. As soon as I could cover a five-finger position, she had me playing little and Bach and Bartok pieces, and learning the stories behind them so that I had a sense, from the very beginning, of the scope of a history and a tradition in music.
A little later I went on to work with Adolph Baller, a wonderful Austrian pianist with whom I studied at Stanford when I was still very young. He gave me, again, another layer of understanding about the importance of tradition. Having come out of the Viennese tradition himself – he studied with a former student of Franz Liszt! – he was a direct link to the European Romantic school that I, an adolescent in California, could only vaguely imagine. Tragically, Baller had suffered tremendously during the Nazi regime (he was interred in a concentration camp and his fingers were broken), before escaping to the U.S., where he was able to rehabilitate his hands and resume his career as Yehudi Menuhin’s accompanist and a member of the Alma Trio. His story gave me some insights into the power that music can have in a life, the strength that can be found in one’s calling throughout personal tragedy and upheaval. That was an important turning point.
Later on, as a teenager, I studied myself at the Hochschule in Vienna and the Mozarteum in Salzburg with the great Hans Graf, and was able to touch that grand tradition for myself, which brought everything full circle. I remember a winter morning in Vienna, the first heavy snow of the year, when an Argentine classmate came running into Graf’s class saying “I went to the Mozart house and I walked in Mozart’s snow!” That’s how it felt for me during those years, working in the birthplace of the tradition, treading the same ground as the composer whose works I was studying. Very magical.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
I think that I’ve come of age in a challenging time to be a musician, but also a very liberating one. So I see the challenges also as advantages. The limited opportunities in the concert world (especially in the U.S. where funding for the arts is such a tremendous issue) present a constant difficulty, but ultimately that difficulty has been an inspiration to me to develop a real creativity and innovative spirit in my approach to presentation and programming, to build a unique profile as an artist, to identify what it is that I have to offer and share with audiences that is uniquely mine, my genuine voice in the world. I think we are living in a time when an artist with something significant to say can take a significant amount of control in determining how, when and where he or she is heard. There is a really interesting and diverse mix of artistic personas on the concert stage these days, reflecting a commitment to different ways and means of musical expression. I think it’s very exciting.
And then of course there have been the challenges of combining my professional and personal lives – the same challenges we all face as musicians, finding ways to integrate my roles in my family and in the professional world. Being a mother of two young children has meant making some choices. But that too, I think, has been a very positive thing for me. I’m certainly a more centered, more thoughtful musician than I was when I was younger, and obsessed solely with the day-to-day mechanics of being a pianist, practicing 6 hours a day. Having a wider landscape to tend has been very good for me. I’ve built a career that encompasses performing and recording, writing, and also concert curating and presenting, which I love to do. Being active as a concert and festival curator/presenter allows me more space to bring my many (too many??) ideas to life! It’s important to me to have some impact in shaping the future of an art form that is changing so quickly, and has so much potential to reach new audiences in new ways.
Which performances/compositions/recordings are you most proud of?
I’m proudest of the multi-faceted projects I’ve created and produced from start to finish, which have encompassed everything from commissioning and premiering new works, to writing and delivering narrative commentary from the stage, co-producing multimedia/visual enhancements, and self-producing and releasing recordings on my own label (Tritone).
Some favourite examples are:
13 WAYS of Looking at the Goldberg: 13 new re-imaginings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. World premiere recording released on the Tritone label in 2010
Long Time Coming: A full-length multimedia concert featuring works by Duke Ellington and a new commission from composer David Sanford
The Americans: A retrospective of concert music influenced by the American vernacular
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?
I love playing the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. They treat artists so well (my son wants me to go back so we can “ride in the limo”!), but more than that, the place evokes for me something very powerful about respect for and pride in the arts. It’s just a beautiful place to be and to perform.
Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?
Whatever I’m working on at the moment! And some “comfort food” pieces that go way back for me, that I turn to when I need to sort of musically meditate and center myself: the Chopin Nocturnes, Schumann’s Davidsbundlertanze, Bach’s Goldbergs, some favourite pieces by Barber, Ives, and Prokofiev…
Who are your favourite musicians?
Arthur Rubinstein, Billie Holiday, Richard Goode, Nat “King” Cole, Chet Baker, Etta James, Charles Aznavour, the Beatles, Pablo Casals, my son playing the trumpet, Lucio Dalla… you see it’s pretty all over the place!
What is your most memorable concert experience?
Hearing Rudolf Serkin under the big tent at Tanglewood in the late ‘80s, just a few years before his death. I was a kid watching a legend and knowing deep in my bones just how precious the moment was. Again, to me he represented the magic of the tradition.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Know what your music means to you. Find your voice. Learn what you alone have to give. Don’t try to be like anyone else. Be flexible in your thinking and let your path take you in unexpected directions. The future can surprise you.
What are you working on at the moment?
My next recording, Exiles’ Café, will be released on the Steinway & Sons label on 26 February 2013. It’s a collection of 19th and 20th century music by composers in exile, or written in response to the experience of exile and diaspora. I’ve positioned music by composers displaced by World War II (Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bohuslav Martinu, Darius Milhaud, and Kurt Weill) alongside works by earlier composers such as Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev, who were likewise political exiles in their own time. I’ve also included the Africa Suite by African American composer William Grant Still, representing the permanent wandering of the African Diaspora, and some preludes by the American composer and novelist Paul Bowles, who lived in self-imposed exile in Tangiers for the latter part of his life. The central, big piece on the album is Korngold’s 2nd Sonata, which he wrote in 1910 when he was a thirteen year old prodigy! It’s a massive, late-Romantic, very Straussian work, just absolutely gorgeous and lush.
The project illustrates the global currents of diaspora and exile, which create artistic confluence among people from many different backgrounds of time and place. I think the theme of displacement is one with which everyone is familiar at some level, and also I think that this goes back to my answer to your earlier question, which touched on my deep emotions about the tradition that has built our concert repertoire. Often it has been breaks in that tradition that have actually carried it forward – the historical and political situations that have carried composers from one place to another (Chopin from Poland to France, Rachmaninoff out of Russia, Korngold to Hollywood where he made a legendary career as a film composer and defined the future of that genre) have influenced the development of concert music in a profound way. So once again challenges sometimes prove essential!
It’s a hugely exciting time for me. I’m watching several musical projects come to full maturity and thrive, and I’m embarking on new ones. I feel that I’ve arrived at a time in my life when my musical/professional priorities are clear to me. I know what I want to do, and I’m ready for new challenges. I feel lucky every single day to be making a life in music, really. It’s an amazing thing.
“I’m launching a new concert series in San Francisco in April. The Artist Sessions will be held at a historic jazz club called Yoshi’s, where the atmosphere is very modern and informal, and the audience is diverse and “downtown”. The concerts will be unique in the sense that they will be presented as immersive encounters with the artists – each evening will be begin with an onstage conversation between the guest artist and myself, and will conclude with an audience talk-back session. I want audiences and artists to come together as people, and for listeners to find context and connection in the work being presented. The first Spring Preview season will feature performances by Christopher O’Riley and myself, and then a full Fall season will resume in September (series guests will be announced in April).” http://www.sfcv.org/article/lara-downes-pianist-entrepreneur-innovator http://tinyurl.com/TheArtistSessions
Lara has just opened an online piano studio where she can meet students from around the world. Sessions can be held from anywhere with wifi and a webcam. Further information here
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Emma Knights is a freelance musician, pianist, singer, producer, composer, creator and curator living in South Australia
The Cross-Eyed Pianist 