Tuesday March 8th, is International Women's Day and Classic 107 is celebrating with a whole day of women composers and performers from 6 AM right through to midnight. Tune in!

Every year the United Nations sets a theme for the day and for 2016 is "Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality".

Well, within the Classical Music world, women have long been under represented and treated as second class citizens. Yet from Hildegard von Bingen in the 12th century through to the present day, women have made a significant contribution which has often been overlooked.  One need only look at the life long struggles faced by composers like Fanny Mendelssohn (Felix Mendelssohn's sister), Clara Schumann (Robert Schumann's wife) and Mozart's sister Maria Anna 'Nannerl' Mozart.  Five years older than Wolfgang, she was a musical prodigy in her own right.

Janet Robbins and Maureen Blementhal of womencomposers.org write:

"For many centuries, women composers and performers were kept from public view. Tradition deemed it only proper that females confine themselves to the domestic arts and leave the concert hall to the men. Considered a novelty, women’s music might be heard at best in drawing rooms and recital parlors.

During this time, only a few works by women ever found their way into the standard repertoire; most compositions never received significant recognition. Recent interest in Clara Wieck Schumann has revealed that although she performed to great acclaim in public, her concerts usually presented works by her husband Robert Schumann or her friend, Johannes Brahms. Her own compositions remained largely unknown to the general public. Other women composers, who received acclaim during their lifetime, have similarly fallen into obscurity, along with their musical works."

In our modern world, the battle still rages. It's a problem that was highlighted in the summerof 2013 when Marin Alsop became the first woman to conduct the last night of the Proms in its nearly-120-year history, prompting headlines and less than flattering comments both in public and in private. James Rhodes from The Guardian wrote how Vasily Petrenko, an award-winning, aggressively talented young conductor, talked on record about how women conductors are a "sexual distraction" for the orchestra. Or how about when Russia's most eminent conductor, Yuri Temirkanov, said  "The essence of a conductor's profession is strength. The essence of a woman is weakness."

Mr. Rhodes goes on to write, "Many orchestras, especially in the US, are now auditioning blind, with participants playing behind screens, and there has been an exponential increase in women being hired as a result – one study shows the likelihood of progressing beyond the preliminary round increases by 50% for women in these kinds of auditions.

Good looks have long helped to compensate for a lack of talent across the entire music industry. But the sexualised marketing of young women, particularly, in classical music has also now become normalised. Witness (the undoubtedly hugely talented) Yuja Wang's barefoot performances complete with interval dress changes, see the hundreds of PR shots of the kind that keep teenage boys locked in their bedrooms for everyone from Hélène Grimaud to Alison Balsom. Some album cover portraits for female artists could double as escort agency profile pics. Publicity for young male artists is increasingly sexualised too, but not to anything like the same degree."

Mr. Rhodes ends his article by asking us too look at some contemporary women performers and dares us to justify the poor treatment.

"Listen to Argerich nailing Rachmaninov's third concerto or Marin Alsop flinging Brahms' second symphony out to a shell-shocked audience and I dare you even to attempt to justify the shabby, second-class treatment to which female musicians are exposed."

We agree! So tune in all day Tuesday March 8th as we bring you the music and performances of some of the most talented women in Classical Music!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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