3. Coffee Concert

The centenary of women’s suffrage in USA is a milestone that we celebrate in this concert and again this evening with quartets by three vital American women composers. We also include Fanny Mendelssohn, who was only permitted to hear her compositions in private salon performances. A raft of recent recordings and performances by top Quartets has brought her work back into the mainstream where she belongs. Jennifer Higdon’s Voices moves from manic and frenzied to calm and quiet, from specific to vague, and from dark to light. Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Quartet was a milestone in American modernism, but sadly, shortly after composing it she became in quick succession a wife, a mother, a communist and a folklorist and left her composing behind.

All works performed by Pacifica Quartet