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Violinist Phillippe Quint has produced a new album of music by women composers with the Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO). Milestones became available for purchase from Pentatone Records on April 4th, and features concertos by Lera Auerbach, Errollyn Wallen, and Lora Kvint. There is also an arrangement of Adoration by Florence Price: a bonus track of a piece originally written for organ (arranged for violin and piano by Elaine Fine). The album also represents an important re-performance of two of these works. Quint originally premiered Auerbach’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in 2003 with Alexander Treger and the American Youth Symphony, the commissioning orchestra of the work. He premiered Wallen’s Violin Concerto with Rune Bergmann and the Calgary Philharmonic in 2024. Lora Kvint’s single-movement Odyssey Rhapsody for Violin and Piano is especially close to his heart because the composer is his mother (*cue audience* “Awwwww”), but it’s also her first large-scale work for violin. She wrote the piece for him, and he debuted it at the 2024 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. In a review of the album for I Care If You Listen, A. Kori Hill writes that, “Milestones is an essential album: an example of getting new works recorded so that these compositions may be downloaded, streamed, or spun in the CD player by many more people and many times over beyond the premiere. Auerbach, Wallen, and Kvint have created works that are beautifully crafted and sound like a blast to play.” I have a lot of hope that Hill is right, and that these pieces will help breathe some much-needed life into a repertoire replete with dusty same-old concertos.
Below is a recording of Anna Zilberbord playing Lera Auerbach’s “Tfila’h (Prayer)” (another of her solo works for violin an orchestra) in 2022.
Jessie Montgomery, composer
Photo Credit: Jiyang Chen
Performance Today has chosen Jessie Montgomery as the 2025 Classical Woman of the Year. Montgomery is a Grammy award-winning violinist, performer, and composer. She won her Grammy in 2024 for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, awarded to her for Rounds for solo piano and string orchestra. The piece was inspired by imagery and themes from T.S. Eliot’s famous Four Quartets, fractals, and the philosophy and biological work of Andreas Weber. The prestigious title “Classical Woman of the Year” is awarded to exceptional women composers or performers “who have made significant contributions to the world of classical music and who provide inspiration for our listeners.” (Performance Today) Montgomery was recognized on the March 31 episode of Performance Today, and her interview with host Fred Child can still be streamed online.
Here is a recording of Montgomery’s Grammy-winning piece Rounds for piano and string orchestra, performed by Awadagin Pratt and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in March 2025.
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