Cahill’s Survey of Women Composers to Launch

courtesy of Jensen Artists

This coming Friday First Hand Records will release the first of three volumes in a series entitled The Future is Female. Many readers will associate that title with past articles about the project undertaken with that title by pianist Sarah Cahill. When completed, the recording project will feature 30 solo piano compositions by 30 different women from a diversity of countries around the globe and a wide range of music history extending back to the seventeenth century. The title of the first volume is In Nature; and, as expected, Amazon.com is currently processing pre-orders.

To be fair, Cahill’s essay for the accompanying booklet states, in the very first paragraph, that this CD “is loosely based on the theme of nature,” “loosely” being the key modifier. That theme is most explicit in the selection by the Russian composer Leokadiya Kashperova. (Some may recognize that name, because she was Igor Stravinsky’s piano teacher.) Cahill performs “Le murmure des blés” (the murmur of the wheat), the third movements of a suite entitled Au sein de la nature (in the midst of nature). (This happens to be one of three Kashperova compositions available through the IMSLP database, the others being her two Opus 1 cello sonatas.)

Nature can also be found in “Un rêve en mer” (a dream at sea), described as an “Étude-méditation” by Venezuelan composer Teresa Carreño, which dates from 1868. This track is followed by “Birds at Dawn,” composed in 1917 by Fannie Charles Dillon. This is the second of eight works collected under the title Descriptive Pieces. That track, in turn, is followed by two of the preludes in the Opus 13 collection of Czech composer Vítězslava Kaprálová. The collection was entitled (in English) April Preludes; but the individual movements are identified only by tempo markings. The spirit of nature then occupies the final track, a piece completed by Mary D. Watkins in 2020 entitled “Summer Days.”

More of a stretch is the three-movement piano sonata by Hungarian pianist and composer Agi Jambor, written in 1949 and given the title To the Victims of Auschwitz. This constitutes a poignant reminder of the wide gulf that separates the nature evoked by composers such as Carreño and Watkins from human nature. Mind you, human nature subsequently emerges in a more favorable light in Eve Beglarian’s “Fireside.”

This piece was composed for Cahill in 2001 as part of a project to honor the centennial of the birth of Ruth Crawford Seeger. Performing this piece requires that the pianist narrate a poem written by the composer at the age of thirteen while playing Beglarian’s music at the same time. This synthesis of speaking and playing would also show up in Cahill’s performance (and recording) of Kyle Gann’s “War Is Just a Racket,” which was composed in 2008.

By now the reader has probably realized just how broad the content of this new release is. I would speculate that this is an offering that lends itself to “digital listening,” drawing attention to individual tracks rather than just playing the entire album from beginning to end. Indeed, those who prefer sitting in front of a large screen, rather than the confined window of a cell phone, will probably utilize the space in such a way that the player of the album track will be positioned alongside the page from the album booklet that presents Cahill’s thoughts about the composition. I suspect that I shall be engaging myself in this exercise while waiting for the release of the second album in Cahill’s collection.