Weekly Rec: Tasmin Little Plays Clara Schumann, Dame Ethel Smyth & Amy Beach

That title's a mouthful! Sorry. But it is, as you might expect, a new album by British violinist Tasmin Little in which she plays music for violin by Clara Schumann, Ethel Smyth, and Amy Beach, female composers of the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. As in so many areas, women's contributions to classical music have generally been buried, and I'd never really listened to Smyth or Beach. Schumann is in the trap of possibly being better known than the other two in part because of her husband's fame - but she suppressed her own career for his sake. (Smyth sounds fascinating, now that I look - she was queer and involved in the suffrage movement! She fell in love with both Emmeline Pankhurst and Virginia Woolf!)

ANYWAY. This album is a good way to get a taste of these underrated composers, and luckily it is also a DELIGHT. It just came out last week and I've already listened a bunch of times. Get a taste of it below: