In collaboration with the Royal Academy of Music and the British Library, we are proud to present an evening exploring three extraordinary pianists: Harriet Cohen, Myra Hess and Irene Scharrer.
Delve into their navigation of the classical music industry, World Wars, and Jewish identity in the twentieth century. Listen to live performances of significant works from their careers by Academy students, see materials from the British Library’s Music Collections, and hear discussions, from a panel of passionate academics, of their political-musical challenges and achievements.
Full Music Programme
2 Bach duets: Wachet Auf, duet Sleepers Awake (JS Bach, BWV 645)
Sanctify Us by thy Goodness, duet Harriet Cohen Bach Chorale (JS Bach, BWV 22)
5 Gibbons pieces (Harriet Cohen, recorded 1947)
Russian Impressions (Harriet Cohen,1913)
Intermezzo III in C from Four Pieces for Piano (Brahms, Op. 119, performed by Hess for the opening Blitz concert October 1939)
[ INTERVAL]
3 Chopin Etudes: C minor Revolutionary, Ab Aeolian Harp, Gb Butterfly
Movement 3 of Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major (Beethoven, Op. 109)
Meet the Panel
Frankie Perry is Digital Music Collections Specialist at the British Library, and catalogued the Harriet Cohen Papers (Part II) there as part of her previous role as Music Manuscripts and Archives Cataloguer. Frankie holds a PhD in musicology from Royal Holloway University of London, following previous study at the University of Oxford. She currently has ongoing research in the areas of special collections (including archives of women musicians) and digital musicology.
New Zealand pianist and researcher Dr Briony Cox-Williams is a lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music in London. As a pianist she has given concerts both as a soloist and as a chamber musician, working with instrumentalists and singers, with a particular concentration on neglected repertoires, composers and performers of the nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries. She is currently working on a book about women of the nineteenth century Royal Academy of Music. This highlights the people, places and concepts involved as important factors alongside repertoire.
She has published articles on women composers such as Fanny Hensel and Lili Boulanger, and on nineteenth-century performance practice in song. Other areas of research and teaching activity include nineteenth-century music aesthetics, concert programming, and the way in which gendered uses of language are coded into music theory and practice.
Danielle Roman is a PhD candidate in music history at New York University. Her research examines music’s linking of various minority groups and radical politics to the movement for Irish independence from 1880-1960. One chapter focuses on Harriet Cohen’s intersecting support for Irish nationalist, Zionist, and feminist causes. Recently, she was awarded the Larkin interdisciplinary Fellowship from the American Conference for Irish Studies and two grants from the U.S.-Ireland Commission for Educational Exchange.
Danielle is currently based in the UK, supported by a GRI Fellowship at NYU London and a Visiting Research Studentship at the University of Cambridge, where she previously completed a Masters. Danielle is also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland as well as a Board member and Soprano for the London Philharmonic Choir.
