Saturday, June 13, 2026
Friday, June 12, 2026
Chamber Music by Women Composers Schumann, Lebrun, Bond, Boulanger, and Carreño
Franz von Lenbach: Clara Schumann
Clara Wieck-Schumann (1819-1896) confided in her diary, “a woman must not wish to compose—there never was one able to do it. Am I intended to be the one? It would be arrogant to believe that.” Her husband Robert was supportive of Clara’s creative efforts, but his opinion on her role was inflexible. “To have children and a husband,” he writes, “who is always living in the realms of imagination do not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out. But Clara herself knows her main occupation is a mother, and I believe she is happy in the circumstance and would not want them changed.”
Clara and Robert Schumann
Such attitudes have actively discouraged or even barred women from pursuing careers as composers for a very long time. It forced Clara Schumann, one of the most talented and distinguished composer-pianist of the 19th century into a “struggle for self-assertion and survival amidst competition, personal disappointments, devastating sorrow, and the challenges of managing both family and career.” Yet despite these obstacles, Clara and other women have persisted in writing music, and their achievements have been hiding in plain sight for centuries. Music by women composers, living or dead, was rarely heard in major concert events. Thankfully this embarrassing situation is gradually changing, and we decided to advance this matter by showcasing some of the most exiting chamber music compositions written by women. Let’s get started with the G-minor Piano Trio, Clara Schumann’s best-known compositions. Composed in 1846, it is her masterpiece and sadly one of the few multi-movement works in her catalogue.
Thomas Gainsborough: Franziska Danzi Lebrun
Franziska Danzi Lebrun (1756-1791) came from a highly talented musical family. Her mother Barbara Sidonia Margaretha Toeschi was a professional dancer and her father Innocenz Danzi a renowned cellist working at the Mannheim court. Her brothers Franz and Johann Baptist, in turn, were professional instrumentalists and successful composers. Franziska was trained as an operatic soprano, and she first publically appeared at the age of 16. Shortly thereafter, she was engaged by the Mannheim opera and highly sought after for her vocal dexterity. Contemporary composers such as Anton Schweitzer, Ignaz Holzbauer, and Antonio Salieri would cast her in leading roles in their most challenging operas. In 1778, Franziska married the composer and oboist of the Mannheim orchestra Ludwig August Lebrun. The couple frequently appeared in concert together, and played in Milan and Paris.
She sang on major operatic and concert stages throughout Europe to great acclaim, and the writer C.F.D. Schubart asserted that she could sing “A, three octaves above middle C with clarity and distinctness.” The family traveled to London in 1779, where Francisca sang at the King’s Theatre in operas by J.C. Bach and Sacchini. Her impact in London was such that the celebrated artist Thomas Gainsborough painted her portrait. However, her talents extended far beyond the stage to keyboard performance and music composition. That includes twelve sonatas for harpsichord with violin accompaniment published as her opus 1 and opus 2. First issued in London between 1779 and 1781, further editions were prepared in Paris and a number of German cities. Although not revolutionary, these charming chamber music compositions provide a delicious taste of mid to late 18th century musical taste. And did you notice that she shares her birth and death year with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?
Victoria Bond
Victoria Bond (b. 1945) is an acclaimed composer, conductor, lecturer, and the artistic director of “Cutting Edge Concerts.” Major publications call her compositions “powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding,” and her conducting “impassioned and full of energy and fervor.” In 2019, the Berlin Philharmonic Easter Festival in Baden-Baden, Germany premiered Bond’s opera Clara, based on the life of composer and pianist Clara Schumann. The German press wrote: “Victoria Bond gives each character a three-dimensional role, enriched with original musical colors.” Thus far, Bond has composed eight operas, six ballets, two piano concertos and numerous orchestral, chamber, choral and keyboard compositions. Victoria Bond is the first woman awarded a doctorate in orchestral conducting from the Juilliard School, and she has served with countless national and international symphony and chamber orchestras.
Victoria Bond
“Dancing on Glass” is based on the Chinese folksong Liu Yang River. It originates from Hunan Province and was a favorite of street musicians who often sang it accompanied by a drum. It also became the melody of a famous patriotic song celebrating Hunan’s most famous citizen, Mao Zedong. The song makes reference to the nine turns that the Liu Yang River makes before it flows into a lake. As such, the piece “is divided into nine sections, consisting of three solos, three duets and three trios.” According to the composer, “the title derives from the dance of light on the surface of the glass-like river. The sections flow into each other without a break, reflecting the changing character of the river.”
Nadia and Lili Boulanger sisters, 1913
For a very long time, the famous Prix de Rome competition was closed to women. Only in 1903 did the Education Minister Joseph Chaumié make the surprise announcement at a press dinner that the Prix de Rome would be open to women from that year. This unexpected announcement took the “Académie” by complete surprise, and they mercilessly schemed to prevent women from receiving that coveted prize. After her sister Nadia gave up her attempts to win the Prix de Rome, Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) decided to compete for the prize. She studied privately and at the Conservatoire, and after an unsuccessful first attempt in the 1912 competition, she won the Prix de Rome in 1913. She was the first woman to win the prize for music, and her success made international headlines. As the local press wrote, “The suffragettes smash windows and burn houses, but a maiden of France has gained a much better victory.”
Lili Boulanger
Already in early childhood, Lili fell ill with bronchial pneumonia, and she was almost constantly ill for the rest of her life. “Her frail health conditioned her life, through the need of constant care, and her musical career, as she had to rely on private composition and instrumental tuition rather than a full musical education.” But while her dependence on others was often overwhelming, she did enjoy complete intellectual and artistic autonomy. Lily once wrote, “I feel discouraged … not because of the suffering, not because of boredom, but because I understand that I would never be able to have in me the feeling that I have done what I would like to do, but what I have to do, since I cannot follow whatever it is with being interrupted for a long time so that my efforts cannot be sustained!” Lili did compose over 50 works, and her “D’un soir triste” exists in two fabulous versions: one for violin or flute and piano, the other for cello and piano.
Teresa Carreño
Teresa Carreño (1853-1917) originally hailed from Caracas, Venezuela, but her family moved to New York in 1862. Teresa had a highly ambitious father, and she demonstrated extraordinary talent for piano performance, improvisation, and composition. She became a student of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and was playing before President Abraham Lincoln at the White House when she was ten years old. The family moved to Paris in 1866, and Carreño played for Franz Liszt. He told the young prodigy, “My dear little Teresita, God has surely given you the greatest gift of all, that of genius. Work, develop your talents, but above all stay true to yourself, and in time you will be one of us.” Carreño performed in concerts throughout the world, and she was “among the first female pianists to tour the United States.”
Carreño served as a role model for new generations of American women who entered musical life as professional performers and composers. In fact, Carreño composed approximately 80 works that mostly date from the early stages of her career. She included them in her concerts, and “they reflect the influence of the style of virtuoso composers, especially Gottschalk, along with an assimilation of Venezuelan rhythmic and formal elements.” Although she mainly composed for the piano, Carreño did approach larger forms in her serenade for string orchestra and her delightful String Quartet in B minor. A scholar writes, “ In 1896, Teresa Carreño, the famous piano virtuosa composed a string quartet which shows a thoroughly sound grasp of quartet technique and style, Particularly praiseworthy is the concise construction of each of the four movements… From the time of its first appearance, this Quartet has received considerable notice.”
Please join us next time for more chamber music composed by women, including works by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, Julia Frances Smith, Germaine Tailleferre, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, and Mélanie Bonis.
The Greatest Conductor of Each Decade of the 20th Century
As recordings, radio, and film elevated particular conductors into international symbols, wars, exile, and changing social values reshaped what authority on the podium could look like.
To name a “greatest” conductor for each decade, then, is to identify the figure who most fully embodied the ideals and ambitions of classical music over those specific years.
Today, we’re going decade by decade and looking at the conductors who defined their eras: both in how they conducted and in how they reshaped musical life and the wider culture.
1900–1909: Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
At the dawn of the century, conductors were often composers, and no one embodied that dual expertise more powerfully than Gustav Mahler.
In 1897, Mahler was appointed the director of the Vienna Court Opera, where he imposed unprecedented standards of discipline.
Mahler’s rehearsals were famously exacting. He demanded absolute fidelity to the score while insisting that every detail serve an overarching expressive vision.
His work in Vienna effectively modernised opera production, treating performances as unified artistic statements rather than star-driven events.
Although his fame today rests largely on his symphonies, Mahler’s influence as a conductor was arguably just as important as his influence as a composer.
His belief that conducting and interpreting were also important acts of creation only became more popular with the advent of recordings, when interpretations could finally be permanently memorialised.
1910–1919: Sir Henry Wood
Sir Henry Wood
A news story on Sir Henry Wood from 1938
The second decade of the century was defined by upheaval and war, and no conductor did more to sustain and democratise musical life during this period than Sir Henry Wood through his championing of music education, ticket affordability, and the sheer breadth of the repertoire he programmed.
Best known as the founder and guiding force behind the Promenade Concerts in London (which later evolved into the modern-day Proms), Wood believed passionately that great music should be accessible to the widest possible audience.
During World War I, Wood continued programming an ambitious repertoire under extraordinary conditions, introducing audiences to new works while also maintaining high standards at a time when cultural institutions were under severe strain.
His influence was less about personal charisma and more about building long-lasting infrastructure. Although he’s less famous today than most of the names on this list, he built an audience, educated listeners, and permanently altered Britain’s – and arguably, Europe’s – relationship with classical music.
1920–1929: Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler live in Paris (1954@Palais Garnier)
In the aftermath of World War I, many musicians turned inward, searching for meaning amid the disillusionment it brought.
Wilhelm Furtwängler emerged in the 1920s as the most philosophically serious conductor of his generation.
Appointed to leading posts in Berlin and Leipzig, he quickly became associated with a deeply organic, flexible approach to tempo and structure.
Furtwängler believed music was a living, breathing process. His performances emphasised long lines, structural tension, and an almost metaphysical sense of inevitability.
Unfortunately, after the 1920s, his legacy became somewhat more ambiguous. Despite his opposition to the Nazis, he was pressured to perform at several Nazi-sponsored concerts: appearances that quickly became controversial.
In the years since, it has been revealed that he secretly helped Jewish people flee the Nazi regime, and Joseph Goebbels privately expressed his displeasure with what he viewed as his insubordination…details that have complicated, rather than resolved, debates about Furtwängler’s moral legacy.
1930–1939: Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Toscanini conducting Verdi’s Overture to La Forza del Destino
If the 1920s belonged to philosophical depth, the 1930s belonged to artists who demonstrated moral clarity – and Arturo Toscanini stood at the decade’s center.
Having already built a formidable reputation in opera and symphonic repertoire, Toscanini became a global figure through recordings and, most significantly, radio broadcasts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. (The rising influence of radio in the 1930s was a major phenomenon in classical music.)
Toscanini’s insistence on precision, fidelity to the score, and rhythmic discipline stood in stark contrast to Furtwängler’s freer elasticity.
His public opposition to fascism also turned him into a symbol of artistic integrity and political conscience in the run-up to World War II.
In an era when authoritarianism threatened Europe’s cultural foundations, Toscanini’s exactitude became an ethical stance as well as a musical one.
1940–1949: Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Stokowski conducting his transcription of Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D minor
World War II reshaped the global musical landscape, and few conductors adapted to this new reality as imaginatively as Leopold Stokowski.
Born in Britain but based primarily in the United States, Stokowski embraced new media and audiences with enthusiasm, exemplifying a newly ascendant American musical culture.
His collaboration with Disney on Fantasia introduced orchestral sound to millions who might never have entered a concert hall.
At the same time, he experimented relentlessly with orchestral colour, seating arrangements, and even transcriptions.
In a decade defined by displacement and reinvention, Stokowski exemplified classical music’s ability to expand its reach without abandoning its core artistic priorities.
1950–1959: George Szell
George Szell
Szell conducts Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5
The postwar years demanded a sense of order and the skill to rebuild – and George Szell delivered. Although his zeal and its accompanying cruelty could prove hurtful to musicians, it was also deeply influential.
He established a model of orchestral discipline that became the gold standard during the second half of the century. As music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, Szell transformed a capable regional ensemble into one of the world’s most dazzling orchestras through the force of his personality.
Szell’s rehearsal methods in Cleveland and elsewhere were famously (and in some cases, infamously) rigorous. Following in the footsteps of Mahler and Toscanini, he pursued clarity and balance with uncompromising intensity.
During a time when institutions were being built or rebuilt from the ground up, Szell embodied the belief that achieving excellence was a matter of relentless, driving craft.
1960–1969: Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
As music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, Karajan cultivated a polished, homogeneous orchestral sound and a striking visual language that, combined, came to define the era’s – and the Berlin Philharmonic’s – style.
Karajan’s embrace of recording technology and visual media also made him one of the most recognisable figures in classical music around this time. His filmed performances are instantly recognisable due to their camera angles and dramatic lighting.
However, despite his contributions to the art, his reputation has always been complicated. His career got started during the Nazi regime, and in the years following World War II, he was criticised for joining the Nazi Party. That said, a denazification tribunal in 1946 cleared him of illegal conduct.
1970–1979: Leonard Bernstein
Especially with the rise of musicians’ unions and empowerment of orchestral musicians in America, the 1970s saw a shift away from authoritarian maestros toward an embrace of collaborative communication – and Leonard Bernstein was one of this change’s most compelling representatives.Although Bernstein had long been a prominent figure in the New York music scene, this decade marked the culmination of his influence through his Mahler cycles, televised lectures, and a uniquely expressive conducting style.
Bernstein blurred boundaries between conductor, educator, and advocate. He routinely spoke directly to audiences both in-person and over television broadcasts, insisting that classical music was not a museum artefact but a living language.
In doing so, he helped to define what a charismatic modern conductor might look like.
1980–1989: Claudio Abbado
Claudio Abbado
Abbado conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 5
By the 1980s, pushback against authoritarian styles of orchestral leadership was continuing, and Claudio Abbado offered an alternative model more rooted in collaboration and transparency.
Known for his work with the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna State Opera, and later the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Abbado emphasised careful listening and shared responsibility among musicians. Abbado’s rehearsals were quiet, his authority understated.
He championed modern repertoire alongside the canon and fostered organisational cultures based on trust rather than fear.
In a period increasingly concerned with ethics and institutional reform, Abbado represented a humane and persuasive reimagining of what musical leadership could be.
1990–1999: Simon Rattle
Sir Simon Rattle
Rattle conducting Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
As the century closed, classical music entered a globalised, post-Cold-War landscape – and Simon Rattle emerged as its genial, emblematic figurehead.
His work with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra demonstrated that ambitious programming, education, and outreach could coexist with artistic excellence.
Rattle embraced the diversity of repertoire and public engagement, pointing toward a future in which, taking cues from Bernstein and Abbado, conductors would act as curators and communicators as much as interpreters.
This approach has resulted in modern-day conductors like Marin Alsop, Gustavo Dudamel, and Osmo Vänskä, all of whom have emphasised artistic achievement alongside serving the educational and emotional interests of their respective communities.
Conclusion
Taken together, these conductors trace a remarkable hundred-year-long evolution: from Mahler’s authoritarian modernism to Rattle’s collaborative pluralism.
The twentieth century didn’t produce a single representative conductor. But it did create a series of figures who redefined what musical leadership could be in the face of a rapidly changing world. Their contributions remain integral parts of classical music culture even today.
Thursday, June 11, 2026
10 lessons to learn from Filipino global pianist Cecile Licad
10 lessons to learn from Filipino global pianist Cecile Licad
Cecile Licad —Photos by Patrick de Veyra
I’d like to play on the top of the rice terraces,” Cecile Licad exclaims in a room full of art and culture writers, seemingly in jest, but completely earnest. It’s the kind of quote that captures her at once: ground-breaking, fearless, and rooted in home even as her career has taken her across the world.
Licad has been called “a pianist’s pianist,” a phrase that captures both her technical brilliance and the uncompromising seriousness of her decades-long practice as one of the most celebrated pianists of her generation.
“Like a missionary”
She was a young child—about seven or eight—when she first appeared with an orchestra in Manila, and barely out of her teens when she became the first Filipino to win the Leventritt Gold Medal, an award that had once vaulted Van Cliburn to international fame.
In the decades since, she has built a career less defined by celebrity than by a rare intensity—one that prizes substance and discipline over glossy display. At Carnegie Hall last winter, critics praised her playing as “less about pianistic display than about ideas and meaning,” a line that could serve as shorthand for her life as one of the Philippines’ most iconic concert pianists.
Yet to think of Licad solely in terms of accolades is to miss her complexity and nuance as an artist and a human being. She is a perfectionist who still delights in play, a relentless worker who has learned—at her son Otavio’s urging—to “chill out.” That balance between rigor and release, seriousness and humor, is part of what makes her artistry and persona so distinctive.
It also explains her sense of mission. She describes herself as someone who is “like a missionary” when performing in the provinces of her homeland, where she brings music to audiences who may be hearing Chopin or Saint-Saëns for the first time.
For her, performance is not only a showcase of a pianist’s artistry and virtuosity but also a potent space for shared cultural experiences to flourish.
A strong fighting spirit
Asked about the secret to her longevity, Licad is passionate and firm: It is her “fighting spirit” that insists on carrying on, even when her body gives up on her and her mind resists. That stubborn energy, she suggests, is what has allowed her to thrive despite the punishing demands of a pianist’s life. “Even if my hands failed me, I go on,” Licad was quick to share.
For all the international acclaim, Licad holds fast to the imprint of home. “I’m Filipino. That’s how I interpret the music,” she says. It is both a matter of roots and of ethos: an openness to transformation, a refusal to abandon language, taste, and community, and a belief that even the most difficult or unfamiliar piece can be made one’s own.
That sense of rootedness came into sharp focus at a recent gathering with art and culture writers. Anton Tantoco Huang—the eldest son of the late Zenaida “Nedy” Tantoco, retail magnate, patron of the arts, and longtime supporter of Licad—posed a question: What had been her most memorable performance in the Philippines?
Licad didn’t cite a venue or a concert. Instead, she paid tribute to Nedy.
“The last years, it was with your mom, definitely,” she says. “She was always encouraging me. Whenever I fell silent, she would say, ‘You’d better perform.’ She reminded me, ‘You cannot stop for a long time. You have to keep on playing here.’ Your mom was a real pusher—in the best sense.”
What follows is Licad in her own words—candid, unsparing, humorous, and wry—reflecting on a lifetime at the piano and the stubborn vitality that sustains her. Here are 10 life and leadership lessons the next generation can take from her story.
1. Find joy in building new relationships
“I’d love to meet people now. I’m not like when I was a kid. It’s just more fun, you know, life is short. I’m interested in many different personalities of people because I respect everybody’s colorful personalities. Everybody has their special thing, you know? Something I used to not know because I was always just stuck at the piano.”
2. Balance excellence and enjoyment
“I don’t practice just for the sake of working scales, like a good student. I practice because either I want to make this passage clearer to the listeners or, first of all, [it’s for] me. I like to enjoy myself.”
3. Make practice your form of mental preparation
“[I mentally prepare myself] by working all the time. That’s what I do. I practice every day.”
4. Grab the opportunity to learn difficult things
“[Part of my repertoire is] the Chopin concerto I played when I was 11 years old. That’s when I first left the country, and I don’t know if I should mention it, but I remember [that] they had auditions for the Manila Symphony, and one jury member said, ‘Why [did] the teacher teach her that [piece]? It’s like putting red lipstick on a little girl.’
But you know what? I’m so glad that I studied it. Once you can learn really difficult things, [do it]! Because now it’s like almost part of my body, you know, the [difficult] pieces.”
5. There is power in “owning” your work
“Every piece that I present to the public, I have to enjoy it even if I [initially] didn’t. Even if I don’t like a piece [in the beginning], I pretend that it’s the most incredible piece, and then, I can transform it. I don’t know [what my least favorite piece is] yet because I’ve made them all into ‘my pieces.’”
6. Embrace your Filipino identity
“I’m Filipino. That’s how I interpret the music. And maybe that’s what makes it different because of where I’m from. It’s how I transmit music [that makes my practice as a Filipino pianist].
I never forgot Tagalog, and I’ve been in America for a long time. You know, some people would travel, and it’s like, ‘Oh, they just speak English and don’t understand Tagalog anymore.’”
7. Fighting spirit produces staying power
“It is called ‘fighting spirit.’ Because during times when I am down, I always know how to go back up. That’s my secret to longevity. I am not a loser.”
8. Even “unusual” music can expand your soul
“[Even if] I’ve been recording ‘unusual’ stuff, it’s still classical. It’s like going to the flea market and finding gems [that are no longer being played].
If you’re not very good, you’re not going to manage to make it sound good. I mean, I sound arrogant, but that’s the way it is. It’s a lot of work.
[Like] American Nocturnes. It’s just beautiful stuff that you’re not used to hearing. But people should train themselves to hear other things because it opens their minds, souls.”9. Harness chaos to learn focus
“I was trained when I was seven years old. My mother used to [tell] my brothers [to purposely be] so noisy while I was practicing. She said, ‘Bother her! You know, the more you bother her, the better she will be!’”
10. Tap into the power of intermittent fasting
“I’ve always done intermittent fasting. One time, I actually didn’t eat the whole day, and [that was when] I played the best.
I played the piano concerto in Germany, and I was so pissed at someone. Somebody hurt me personally, it was something really bad, and it was one of the best concerts I did… without eating anything because I couldn’t eat. And I thought I would be really weak. It’s the way I am. But people are different.”
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