WorldView Episode 38: Grażyna Bacewicz & Thea Musgrave
Episode thirty-eight of WorldView is the first episode to feature only female composers, including Polish violinist Grażyna Bacewicz and Scottish opera composer Thea Musgrave. Enjoy!
Grażyna Bacewicz Biernacka was born in central Poland in 1909, the daughter of a musician. After an early education in violin and piano, she started studying at the Warsaw Conservatory. After her graduation in 1932, fellow composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski (WorldView Episode thirteen) paid for Bacewicz to continue her studies in Paris. She worked with prolific artist Nadia Boulanger, one of the best known instructors in composition of all time; Bacewicz’s works became internationally renowned, making her only the second Polish woman to have an international following (behind Maria Szymanowska). The artists’s career brought her back to Poland, were she held underground concerts during World War II. Bacewicz passed away in 1969, leaving behind over two hundred chamber, solo, and orchestral works. Episode thirty-eight of WorldView features Bacewicz’s “Ten Concert Etudes for Piano”. It was written in 1956, during the artist’s most active compositional period. Ewa Kupiec performs in this recording from Hanssler Classics.
A pupil of both Nadia Boulanger and Aaron Copland, Thea Musgrave is one of Scotland’s more well-known composers. Born in 1928, Musgrave has worked as music faculty at both UC Santa Barbara and Queens College, while maintaining an active career as a composer. Many of her most popular works are operas, including “Harriet, the Woman Called Moses”, “Mary, Queen of Scots”, and “Simón Bolívar”. She currently lives in the United States with her husband, violinist and conductor Peter Mark. In this episode, Richard Pittman and the Boston Musica Viva perform Musgrave’s second chamber concerto, one of her first major non-operatic works, originally written in 1996.
WorldView Episode Thirty-Eight Playlist:
Patricia VAN NESS, “Michael”, {Tapestry, Cristi Catt (sop)} - Telarc
Elizabeth ALEXANDER, “Fractals for Bassoon and Piano”, {Christin Shillinger (bas), Jed Moss (pf)} - MSR Classics
Nancy BLOOMER DEUSSEN, “A Recollection”, {Mary Kathleen Ernst (pf)} - Innova
Grażyna BACEWICZ, “10 Etuden (Ten Concert Etudes for Piano)”, {Ewa Kupiec (pf)} - Hanssler Classics
Thea MUSGRAVE, “Chamber Concerto No. 2”, {Boston Musica Viva, Richard Pittman (cond)} - Delos
WorldView is a classical music radio show featuring composers from everywhere in the world - except Western Europe. Tune in to hear works by lesser-known artists such as Irving Fine and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and widen your knowledge of classical music. Hinke Younger hosts each week’s episode of WorldView on Mondays at 9AM and 6PM (with a rebroadcast Saturdays at 2PM) on Charlottesvilleclassical.org.