This Be Her Verse

“What if a woman wrote the song?” This question drives a recital of songs by female composers performed by soprano Golda Schultz and pianist Jonathan Ware. Opening with works by Clara Schumann and Emilie Mayer (including her setting of the ballad Erlkönig ), this recital weaves stories of women’s experience with fantastic tales of powerful sirens like the Lorelei . The great American-British violist and composer Rebecca Clarke’s arresting William Blake settings offer a woman’s perspective on texts also set by Benjamin Britten. Devotional works from Nadia Boulanger reveal a compositional master in her own right, in addition to her legendary status as pedagogue to innumerable greats including Aaron Copland and Daniel Barenboim. This be Her Verse , a song cycle by poet-librettist Lila Palmer and composer Kathleen Tagg was directly commissioned by the artists to conclude the programme and add an important contribution to the repertory: Songs written by women, about women, highlighting the female experience.