Oyarzabal Surveys Thirteen Female Composers

courtesy of Naxos of America

Tomorrow IBS Classical will release the latest solo piano album recorded by the Spanish pianist Antonio Oyarzabal, born in the Basque city of Bilbao and currently based in London. The title of the album is La Muse Oubliée (the forgotten muse). It consists of 34 short tracks through which Oyarzabal surveys the work of thirteen different female composers. For those too impatient to wait a day, Amazon.com is currently processing pre-orders of this new release.

Readers that have been following this site for some time probably know that bringing female composers into the limelight has been going on in the United States for some time. Closest to home is pianist Sarah Cahill, whose The Future is Female project has been going strong for several years, with its most recent installment taking place last month in a program entitled Celebration of the Centennial of the 19th Amendment. Further from San Francisco is the Neave Trio of violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura, currently the Faculty Ensemble-in-Residence at the Longy School of Music of Bard College. In the fall of 2019, Chandos Records released their Her Voice album of performances of piano trios by Louise Farrenc, Amy Beach, and Rebecca Clarke; and last month they live-streamed a recital at which they added Cécile Chaminade’s Opus 11 trio in G minor to their repertoire.

This is not to accuse Oyarzabal of “playing catch-up.” However, it is hard to resist wondering whether or not Europe has been a bit behind the curve when it comes to bringing female composers into repertoire. In that context after listening to this new recording, I feel happy to welcome this pianist into a fold that seems to be growing here in the United States. As might be guessed, many of the composers on Oyarzabal’s album, if not the specific compositions, can also be found in Cahill’s repertoire. However, that just means that we now have the opportunity to listen to multiple interpretations of music that was probably unknown to most of us at the end of the last century.

On the other hand there are definitely selections that provided “first-encounter” experiences in my own listening history. I suppose I was most taken with Oyarzabal’s acknowledgement of his own roots by including Esquisses d’une après midi Basque (sketches of a Basque afternoon), a six-movement suite by Emiliana de Zubeldia. While, as has already been mentioned, all of the tracks on this album are brief, each of these “sketches” is a miniaturist gem that left me curious about other compositions in Zubeldia’s catalog. That said, I have to credit the booklet notes by Eva Sandoval (translated into English by Oyarzabal) with informing me about Zubeldia, as well as providing valuable informative accounts of all of the other selections on this album.

The only issue I would raise with this album concerns its title. There is no reason to assume that the “muse” that informed the composers on this album was not the same muse that informed the more familiar male composers throughout music history! If anyone has been “forgotten,” it is the composers themselves, which is why it is important that the 21st century is emerging as a time in which female composers from all periods of music history are being “recalled.” Oyarzabal has now established himself as one of the agents contributing to that process of recollection.