Our year-end review of albums concludes with a series of compilations of music by women.
Breaking Waves (BIS 2025) is the latest album by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra (OCO), directed by Malin Broman. It features works by three women composers: Grace Williams‘ Sea Sketches, Grażyna Bacewicz‘s fourth String Quartet, and Johanna Müller-Hermann‘s String Quartet. The focus of the album is the expanded orchestration of the two quartet works. Grace Williams’s Sea Sketches has already seen another recording this year on the BBC Philharmonic’s album Grace Williams: Orchestral Works; the piece remains popular for its evocative writing. The OCO commissioned composer and bassist Marijn van Prooijen in 2023 to arrange Grażyna Bacewicz’s fourth string quartet (1951). His arrangement does more than expand the original four parts to accommodate an orchestra, and indeed makes it easy to imagine that the piece was always written this way. The final work is an orchestration of another string quartet by Johanna Müller-Hermann, this time originally done by Ingvar Karloff in 2022.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Christian Karlsen has produced a compilation of Galina Ustvolskaya’s Symphonies 1–5 (BIS, 2025). While the first symphony (1955) keeps closer to the traditional form than the other four, with three movements and a full orchestra—the second movement is given in eight short parts—none of them try to bear much resemblance to classic symphonies. As they progress, their respective orchestrations become more sparse, and they rely on solo voices and unusual combinations of instruments rather than more conventional orchestral sections and timbre groupings. Ustvolskaya was an uncompromising modernist with a profoundly original voice, and her music has been described as having the “narrowness of a laser beam capable of piercing metal.” The intensity of her writing is balanced by the shortness of the pieces. The latter four symphonies (1979, 1983, 1985/7, and 1989/90) are each presented in a single, relatively short movement—the shortest is seven minutes, and the longest just over twenty. This recording offers a survey of Galina Ustvolskaya’s symphonic works from her earlier efforts to her later essays in the craft.
The Philadelphia Orchestra, directed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, has released an album featuring Margaret Bonds’s Montgomery Variations (1964) on an album shared with symphonies 2 & 4 by William Grant Still (Deutsche Grammophon, 2025). Montgomery Variations is a series of seven variations on the spiritual “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.” Like many spirituals, it emerged out of the musicking practices of enslaved and emancipated communities of Black Americans in the United States in the early-mid 19th century. Such tunes were collected and either written down or recorded in sound (depending on their era), and therefore can often be found in collections of spirituals and other compendia of Black American sacred music. Many Black composers of classical & art music have chosen spirituals as a source material for their larger works from the Harlem Renaissance to today, and it’s hard to overstate how important their influence has been on American classical music. The popularity of Bonds’ Montgomery Variations during the ongoing revival of her music speaks strongly to how good the piece itself is; the PO’s recording of it is the latest in a flurry of them after the Minnesota Orchestra gave the piece’s first recording in 2021.
(Sony 2025) Soloist Esther Abrami has released her compilation Women, with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. The album continues her ongoing work to promote the work of female composers, historical and contemporary. The music included on this album brings together pieces from the depth and breadth of women’s writing for orchestra, including both original works and arrangements. Oscar winners Rachel Portman and Anne Dudley are represented by new compositions, as is Abrami in both her soloist and composer capacities; other works by historic composers such as Pauline Viardot, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Teresa Carreño, and Ethel Smyth have been recorded before (in the case of Smyth’s March of the Women, many times). the headlining piece on this album is the world-premiere recording of Ina Boyle’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, dedicated to the memory of her mother. Women brings together an incredible group of collaborators, including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Irene Delgado-Jiménez, Kim Barbier (piano), Lavinia Meijer (harp), and the Esther Abrami Quintet.
(Divine Art, 2025) Heather Tuach and Yoko Misumi have released their chamber compilation album In the Mirror: Music by Women Composers. It includes music by 20th- and 21st- century women composers: Barbara Heller, Dobrinka Tabakova, Elizabeth Maconchy, Ester Mägi, Ivy Parkin, Jean Coulthard, Jennifer Higdon, Jessie Montgomery, Jocelyn Morlock, Liz Dilnot Johnson, and Nadia Boulanger, all of whom are well represented on other recordings throughout Divine Art’s catalogue. The focus of In the Mirror are new works and works that have previously been recorded spanning the 20th-century. The result is an album that explores many different approaches to writing for piano and cello.
While these last two albums highlight young performers, it is satisfying to see veteran Catherine Wilmers (cello) continuing her decades-long advocacy with A Cello Galaxy of British Women Composers. Joined by Jill Morton (piano), this is another visionary release on Divine Art. Wilmers’ 2000 recording A cello century of British women composers influenced young artists, like those on the previous two albums, whether they realize it or not. Wilmers’ decades long devotion to composers such as Rebecca Clarke, Dora Bright, and Amy Elsie Horrocks, as well as the work of pioneering cellist May Mukle continues bringing the legacies of these women the attention they deserve. The majestic Sonata (1899) by Horrocks in particular is a notable discovery that we hope will soon challenge the overworked 19th-century standards that still burden the cello repertoire.
This concludes our featured albums of 2025 — although we will be following up with “what we missed” as pointed out by our devoted readers! For all of us at WPA, we wish a very happy holiday season to all of our readers. May 2026 be an even better year for women in music
And as ever, email us at info@wophil.org