Fanny Mendelssohn’s description of Das Jahr reflects the challenges women composers had to get their work taken seriously in the 19th Century. It is, after all, a substantial piece – each movement representing a month of the year – lasting 50 minutes in performance that could sit alongside pillars such as Schumann’s Davidsbündlertanzen. Even with the efforts to make the work of Fanny and other women composers more widely known, we’re still faced with one big obstacle: women simply weren’t allowed to write for orchestras.
Electra Perivolaris will take ‘March’ as her starting point, followed by a contribution inspired by ‘April’ from Errollyn Wallen. Freya Waley-Cohen’s commission will draw on “her beautiful and elegant June serenade with visitations or memories of the darkly playful February scherzo”. Roxanna Panufnik will compose a piece inspired by the closing movement, ‘Nachspiel’, which she says “appealed to me with its intense focus on harmony which moves and never really settles until the very end.”
