December greetings, everyone! There’s lots to listen to this week!
Helen Hagan, composer
On December 4th, the award-winning Miami University Symphony Orchestra (MUSO) will present its concert Women in Music – A Celebration of Women Composers under the direction of Maestro Ricardo Averbach. Their program includes: Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral and Helen Hagan’s Piano Concerto in C minor. Higdon’s Blue Cathedral is one of the most frequently performed works by a contemporary woman, and is a favorite of audiences around the world—we might call it a modern classic. Helen Hagan’s single-movement piano concerto is a recently rediscovered work. In 1912, Hagan became the first black woman to graduate from the Yale School of Music. Dr. Samantha Ege, whose work has done so much to contextualize the career of Florence Price (as in her book South Side Impresarios How Race Women Transformed Chicago’s Classical Music Scene), describes Hagan’s importance to the legacy of black women composers writing large-scale works of art music: “While Florence Price is celebrated as the first Black woman to have a symphony performed by a major national orchestra, Hagan’s achievements show that Black women were composing large-scale orchestral works much earlier. To me, Hagan’s life and music suggest a much longer history of Black female symphonic composers—even if we don’t necessarily know their names. But Hagan evidences the depths of this hidden history.” –from an Interview with Ege, 2022, on the occasion of the premiere of the revived Hagan Concerto, as orchestrated by Soomin Kim. This premiere also received extensive coverage in the Washington Post.
The Dec. 4 (7:30 PM, EST) Concert at Miami University with MUSO features piano soloist Michael Chertock of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. The CONCERT WILL BE LIVESTREAMED!
Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy is now publishing the Hagan Concerto (following negotiations with the Helen Hagan estate), in its orchestration by Soomin Kim. The only known sources of the Concerto are a two-piano version, which Kim has worked with in producing an edited and orchestrated version. This performance is the first performance under our auspices, and also the first to take place outside of the New Haven area! Let it be the first of many! Please email info@wophil.org for information about the Hagan Orchestration.
Below is a recording of Hagan’s concerto performed by one of WPA’s very favorite artist-scholars Dr. Samantha Ege on her 2022 Lontano Records album Black Renaissance Woman: Piano Music by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Nora Holt, Betty Jackson King, & Helen Hagan.
On Tuesday December 2nd, composer Lera Auerbach‘s music had two separate performances. The Tonkünstler-Orchester of Lower Austria performed Icarus (2011) at the Musikverein in Vienna under the baton of Lidiya Yankovskaya. Her work appeared alongside music by Prokofiev, Barber, and Stravinsky. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra also performed Auerbach’s Frozen Dreams (2025) on their Carnegie Hall Preview performance at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh alongside pieces by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich. The orchestra will repeat the program at Carnegie Hall on December 3rd, for which the performance of Frozen Dreams is the New York premiere.
On Tuesday December 2nd, the University Orchestra de Zaragosa performed Amy Beach’s Gaelic Symphony (Symphony in E Minor, Op. 32) at the Auditorio de Zaragoza: Sala Mozart in Madrid. The program also included works by Saint-Saëns and Dvořák.
On December 3rd, the Royal Swedish opera will perform the world premiere of composer Britta Byström‘s new opera Eatnama váibmu (“The Heart of the Earth”) in Stockholm. The performance is conducted by Anna-Maria Helsing and directed by Elle Márjá Eira. The opera is sung in Northern Samì with Swedish subtitles.
Nan Harrison Washburn and the Michigan Philharmonic have won The American Prize in Orchestral Performance (professional division), 2025. Washburn, Music Director since 1999, has won 19 ASCAP Awards for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music. The orchestra has become known as as a highly innovative and community-minded ensemble. Nan Washburn, one of the founders of The Women’s Philharmonic, has served as a Board member for Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy since our 2008 founding. The 2nd Place Award is to Antoine T. Clark and the Worthington Chamber Orchestra (Ohio), a recipient of one of our three-year Performance Grants.
As we enter “Messiah” and “Nutcracker” season, please keep an ear out for holiday music by women composers! Our friend Katherine Needleman has stated this list of music by women for many holidays, — Christmas/Winter/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/New Year is most pertinent at the moment, but other holidays are also included. Let us know who you hear! Email us at info@wophil.org