Credits:

Orena Tocarol, Igor Flesin.

Description:

This album features songs by female composers who made their mark on music history during the 19th and 20th centuries. Featured are Alma Mahler-Werfel, Mahler's wife and inspiration to many artists including Klimt and Kokoschka; Clara Schumann, a good companion to Robert Schumann, a patron of Brahms, and herself an excellent pianist. The four women are Pauline Viardo-Garcia, a friend of Chopin and admired by the great Russian writer Turgenev, and Vycheslava Kaplerová, who fell in love with and married Izzy, the son of Alphonse Mucha, but died at the young age of 25. At a time when it was difficult for women to be recognized as composers, the works of these women, who made creative contributions to their partners while remaining true to their own art, are finding new value in the 21st century, a time when gender equality is being advocated. Performed by soprano Olena Tokar, a native of Lugansk (Luhansk) who studied at the Moscow Conservatory and the Leipzig University of Music, and German-Ukrainian pianist Igor Hryshin. Naxos Japan