Composed: 1847
Premiered: 1849, Paris
Duration: 32 minutes

Despite her obvious talents as pianist, composer, and teacher, the male-dominated society of mid-19th-century Europe held Farrenc back from achieving the full and lofty reputation that she deserved. With the swell in interest in female composers, she has finally begun to receive the respect she has always deserved.

Her artistic parents permitted her to enroll at the prestigious Paris Conservatory when she was just 15. She married a fellow student, flutist Aristide Farrenc, and toured with him as a duo for several years. In 1842, she was appointed Professor of Piano at the Conservatory, but it was only after a decade in the post that she began receiving the same income as her male faculty colleagues. Her teaching skills drew high praise.

Anyone who enjoys the music of Farrenc’s early-romantic contemporaries such as Chopin and Schumann is likely to respond to her music, too. It has plentiful melodic appeal, poetry, and drama. Her catalogue includes large quantities of piano music (she composed for that instrument exclusively during the 1820s); plentiful chamber works; and a handful of works for orchestra.

She composed the last of her three symphonies in 1847, the year during which Felix Mendelssohn died; Robert Schumann created Symphony No. 2; Frédéric Chopin, the Waltzes, Op. 64; and Giuseppe Verdi, an opera, Macbeth.

Program note by Don Anderson © 2023.