THE FUTURE IS FEMALE, VOLUME III

THE BACKGROUND

In volume three of The Future is Female for First Hand Records the American pianist Sarah Cahill continues her exploration of music for the keyboard by women composers. Throughout the many selections by female composers from the past three centuries, Sarah Cahill – peerless pianist and researcher par excellence – self-effacingly directs our focus away from her extraordinarily rich playing and on to the compositions of sister musical artists. This listener continues to salute the protean talent of Sarah Cahill, both pianist and researcher.

THE MUSIC

Hélène de Montgeroult (1764–1836) – Piano Sonata No. 9 in F sharp minor, Op. 5

Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944) – Thème varié, Op. 98

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909–1969) – Scherzo

Chen Yi – Guessing

Franghiz Ali-Zadeh – Music for Piano

Pauline Oliveros (1932–2016) – Homage to Ruth Crawford

Hannah Kendall – On the Chequer’d Field Array’d

Regina Harris Baiocchi – Piano Poems

THE PERFORMANCE

Sara Cahill pays careful attention to every note she plays in this recording, giving equal care to the diverse compositional idioms and styles of each of the eight composers in the album. She plays as elegantly the music of the French early classicist Hélène de Montgeroult as she does the Romantic pieces of Cécile Chaminade and the modernist works of Pauline Oliveros.

In the words of Sarah Cahill, “The Future is Female… does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed and heard…”

Rafael de Acha (c) 2023