During our end-of-year wrap-up WPA is looking back at some of albums of music by women released in 2025. The four albums featured today all highlight some of our very favorite composers, performers, and pieces. They’ve appeared frequently in our pages this year, and are in heavy rotation on our listening lists.
In April 2025 the Munich Symphony (Münchner Symphoniker), led by Joseph Bastian, released a new all-Amy Beach recording. It features her perennial audience favorite and monumental Symphony Op. 32 “Gaelic”, her Bal Masqué for orchestra, and three world premiere song recordings: her concert arias Maria Stuart: Eilende wolken, Segler der Lüfte, op. 18 and Jephthah’s Daughter (text by C.L. Mollevant), op. 53, and her song Extase (text by Victor Hugo), the second of three songs in her 1893 Three Songs Op. 21, in the composer’s own orchestration. The five pieces together form a portrait of Beach in the 1890s and her work, and are based on our own editions! The album’s available for purchase and can be streamed via most major streaming services, including Naxos and Tidal.
In November 2025 Kitty Whately released an album of songs by Rebecca Clarke with Nicholas Phan and Anna Holbrook: Rebecca Clarke: Complete Songs (Signum Classics, a label division of Challenge Records, 2025) The album brings Clarke’s known song output onto one volume, including 22 word premiere recordings. Much of her early song repertoire has been either rarely recorded or unrecorded until now, and among the works now available are “Weep You No More,Sad Fountains” (her original solo version), and the epic “Binnorie: A Ballad.”
Whately has been called “one of the UK’s most characterful mezzo sopranos of the operatic stage and concert platform,” is a past winner of the Kathleen Ferrier award, and is a BBC New Generation Artist. As an interpreter who specializes in contemporary art song and opera, Whately is well-positioned to perform all of Clarke’s prodigious output of vocal chamber music, which she composed over the course of her entire working career (1903–1977). Listen via the Challenge Records website, Tidal, or Spotify.
In March 2025 Dr. Samantha Ege released her new album of concertos for piano by Julia Perry and Doreen Carwithen. Maestra (Lorelt 2025), is a collaboration between Samantha Ege (piano) and the Lontano Orchestra directed by Odaline de la Martinez. Perry’s concerto is particularly interesting as it’s presented in “two speeds” instead of the conventional two movements. “Slow” is more abstract and cerebral, with irregular time signatures disrupting any sense of consistent pulse. “Fast” is much more dancelike and energized, drawing complex syncopations and rhythms from its afro-diasporic roots. As Dr. Ege describes: “The piano cadenzas are more virtuosic [than in] a more conventional concerto (like Dorren Carwithen’s). But Perry is experimenting more with cool than technique; the pianist must paint rather than play.” Tracks from the album can be streamed on Youtube, Tidal, and Spotify.
In July 2025 the BBC Symphony Orchestra, led by Sakari Oramo, released its second volume of orchestral works by composer Grażyna Bacewicz. (Chandos, 2025) The works included are her Symphony No. 2 (1951), her Piano Concerto (1949), and her Concerto for Symphony Orchestra (1962). Bacewicz is known for her deft bringing of neoclassicism and modernism, and these three rarely-recorded works shed some new light on her skill. The Piano Concerto is also notable as a (sort of) winner of the Frédéric Chopin Composers’ Competition. The competition was organized to commemorate the Chopin centenary by the Polish Composers’ Union, and Bacewicz’s concerto took second place in the Piano & Orchestra category where no first prize was awarded. The Second Symphony is formally more traditional, harkening back to the Classical-era form and style. She credits her works from these years with helping her develop in to the third (arguably “mature”) composer voice of her later years. Listen via Chandos Records, Tidal, and Spotify.
Let us know what you’re listening to this season! And what was your favorite album featuring women composers? Email us at info@wophil.org.