Pianist develops new route to gender balanced programming

Pianist Alexandra Dariescu has achieved gender parity in her performances throughout the 2021/22 and 2022/23 seasons through pairing ‘mainstream’ works by male composers with works by female composers in each programme.

With each pairing, Dariescu seeks to highlight the connections between the composers and give fuller, more inclusive context to each work and the artistic era or movement it is part of. As a result of this practice, Dariescu’s 30 concerto appearances in the 2021/22 season have included 20 works by women composers.

Royal Philharmonic Society chief executive James Murphy, said: 'For too long, we've lived under the misconception that history lacked female composers. It's exciting to see artists like Alexandra excavate treasures by a range of female composers we ought to know better.’

Action is sorely needed, as demonstrated by a recent study conducted by women in music charity Donne Foundation. The organisation’s analysis of composers’ works scheduled for the 2020/21 season in 100 orchestras from 27 countries found that only 5 per cent of the music scheduled in their concerts is composed by women and 88.55 per cent included solely compositions written by men.

Dariescu said: ‘I truly believe we ought to mirror our society in our programming and I take this as a personal responsibility to be able to build bridges and make classical music truly more accessible to our 21st-century audiences. Reaching quotas will only tick boxes and help us short term, but will not have a real impact unless we change our culture.’

Dariescu’s pairing approach has so far facilitated performances of concertos by composers including Nadia Boulanger, Germaine Tailleferre, Leokadiya Kashperova, Emily Howard, Iris ter Shiphorst, Florence Price and Clara Schumann. Orchestras including the Houston and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic have all embraced Dariescu’s innovative approach.

How are audiences responding? In Houston Dariescu paired César Franck's Symphonic Variations with the US premiere of Nadia Boulanger's Fantaisie. John Mangum, executive director and CEO of the Houston Symphony Orchestra recalled: ‘All of us in the audience were astonished and delighted to discover this masterpiece by Boulanger, especially in the context Alexandra created by pairing it with the Franck.’

You can find out more about Alexandra Dariescu here.