Show Notes
I am joined by Dr. Hannah Roberts for a conversation about Scottish-born American composer, Helen Hopekirk. Hopekirk was known as one of the greatest pianists in her day and also became a well-regarded piano teacher. Hannah has recently released a beautiful recording of Hopekirk's piano music under the Parma label. Known for her work championing female voices in the keyboard repertoire, American pianist Hannah Roberts has performed throughout the United States and abroad in Austria, Serbia, and the United Kingdom. Her scholarship focuses on reviving the works of overlooked female composers with a special emphasis on Scottish-American pianist Helen Hopekirk, and her album Celtic Legends: The Piano Music of Helen Hopekirk was released by Navona Records in Fall 2026. Along with her active performing career, Roberts maintains a vibrant profile as a clinician, pedagogue, and researcher. Her articles on female composers have appeared in American Music Teacher, Piano Magazine, and the MTNA e-Journal, and she was awarded the 2023 Edward T. Cone Fellowship from the Society for American Music for her research on Hopekirk’s piano music. She has also presented lectures at the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP), College Music Society National Conference (CMS), National Association of Teachers of Singing National Conference (NATS), and state and national conferences of Music Teachers National Association (MTNA). Roberts currently serves as Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Alabama, where she teaches piano and piano pedagogy. She holds a D.M.A. in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Oklahoma. Website: hannahrobertspiano.com Hopekirk Album (PARMA/Navona Records): https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6892/ womenofnotes.substack.com
More from Women of Notes
UK-based music researcher and writer Dr. Leah Broad joins me for an entertaining and informative conversation about the larger-than-life British composer, Ethel Smyth (1858-1944). Dr Leah Broad is an award-winning writer, historian and broadcaster. She wrote the critically acclaimed book Quartet: How Four Women Challenged the Musical World, and her next book Unsung: Trailblazing Women Musicians of the Second World War publishes in February 2027. Winner of the 2015 Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism, Leah has written for outlets including the Financial Times, New Statesman, Guardian and BBC Music Magazine. Selected as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2016, she is often on air discussing music and history, and has appeared as a public speaker at events and venues such as the BBC Proms and Hay Festival. She is also the founder of Unheard Heritage, a recording initiative to revive great, forgotten works for new audiences. She holds a DPhil in musicology from the University of Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Website: www.leahbroad.com Substack: Songs of Sunrise Unsung: Trailblazing Women Musicians of the Second World War available to pre-order here. Unheard Heritage: www.unheardheritage.com
UK-based Greek pianist and researcher, Dr. Maria Stratigou joins me to share some of her vast knowledge on a giantess in 19th French music, Louise Farrenc. Farrenc was a very accomplished performing pianist, a prolific composer, and an important pedagogue. She taught at the Paris Conservatoire for thirty years, and was the earliest and only woman to have a significant teaching career there in the 1800s. Dr Maria Stratigou is an award-winning Greek pianist, researcher, and educator known for her pioneering work on 19th-century female composers. Holding a PhD in Performance from the Royal Northern College of Music as an Onassis Foundation and NWCDTP Scholar, she serves as a Teaching Associate in Music Performance at the University of Sheffield. A recipient of the Gina Bachauer-N. Dumba Discography Award 2024, Dr Stratigou is making history as the first-ever pianist to record Louise Farrenc’s complete solo piano works, released as a multi-volume series for Grand Piano Records (with Vol. V featured as BBC Radio 3 Album of the Week). Her performance-led research explores Farrenc’s piano études, pedagogy, manuscripts, historical editions, and performance practices—offering vital new insights into 19th-century pianism and French musical aesthetics. Her scholarly work encompasses book chapters, peer reviews, and international lecture-recitals, including at the University of Oxford and the Royal Musical Association. As an active soloist and chamber musician, Maria has won top prizes at international competitions, championed world premieres across Europe, and holds Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).
Hilary Poriss joins me for a fun and wide-ranging conversation about 19th century Diva Extraordinaire, composer, pianist, salonniere, and voice teacher, Pauline Viardot who was born into a very musical family in Paris in 1821. Hilary Poriss’ primary research interests are in the areas of 19th-century Italian and French opera, performance practice, diva culture, and the aesthetics of 19th-century musical culture. She has published four books: Gioacchino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (Oxford University Press), Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford University Press), Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (Cambridge University Press), and of The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press). Her newest book project, a biography about the nineteenth-century diva Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), will be published by the University of Chicago Press. Poriss’ articles and reviews have appeared in Music & Letters, Journal of Musicology, 19th-Century Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Verdi Forum, Journal of British Studies, and other musicological books and journals. She has held fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, Columbia University Society of Fellows in the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Gladys Kriebel Delmas Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. She frequently presents her work in scholarly and public venues. Upcoming appearances include a keynote lecture at the interdisciplinary symposium “Drawing the Line: Race, Gender, Ethics, and the Arts” (St. Anselm College) and a colloquium lecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Her article, “A Queen of 19th-Century Opera Gets New Attention,” was published by the New York Times. Poriss teaches a variety of courses at Northeastern University, Poriss teaches a variety of courses. She has taught previously at the University of Cincinnati, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University. womenofnotes.substack.com
Composer Linda Catlin Smith joins host Sandra Mogensen ahead of Catlin Smith's world premiere of her new work, The Horizon with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on September 24 (26 & 27). Listen in for an exploration of the creative life and an in-depth look at the creative process involved in composing. Linda Catlin Smith grew up in New York and lives in Toronto. Her music has been commissioned and/or performed by many soloists and ensembles worldwide including: Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Tectonics Festival (Glasgow), Huddersfield Festival, Vancouver, Edmonton and Victoria Symphony Orchestras, Tafelmusik, Tapestry New Opera, Bozzini Quartet, Arraymusic, Continuum, Thin Edge Collective, Chamber Choir Ireland, and soloists Eve Egoyan, Philip Thomas, Satoko Inoue, Cheryl Duvall, piano; Colin Tilney and Wesley Shen, harpsichord; Elinor Frey, Baroque cello; Milan Pala and Maya Bennardo, violin; and many others. Recordings include: The Plains (Cheryl Duvall), Dark Flower (Thin Edge Collective,) Thought and Desire, (Eve Egoyan), and six recordings: Dirt Road, Drifter, Wanderer, Among the Tarnished Stars, Ballad, and Flowers of Emptiness with the label another timbre. Her string trio Meadow and her choral work Folio were recorded in Ireland by the Louth Contemporary Music Society. In 2019, her orchestral work, Nuages, (commissioned by the BBC Proms), was premiered at Royal Albert Hall, and received its Canadian premiere in 2023 with the Vancouver Symphony. Many of her compositions were supported by commissions through the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council and the Laidlaw Foundation. Her works are available through Composers Edition (UK) and the Canadian Music Centre. In addition to composing, Linda has taught composition privately and at Wilfrid Laurier University (1999-2020). She was awarded honorary membership to the ISCM, and an Honorary Doctorate in Music from the University of Victoria in 2023. www.catlinsmith.com For more information go to https://womenofnotes.substack.com and consider subscribing for free, or with a paid subscription as a way to support this podcast.
Molly McCann, aka Henselpushers, is a music publisher/editor/arranger dedicated to making all of Fanny Hensel’s works freely accessible to the world. Since starting henselpushers.org in 2020, McCann has published approximately 200 free PDF scores of Fanny Hensel's original compositions, and has published several arrangements of Hensel’s works for learners or alternate instrumentation. Please follow Henselpushers on Patreon at patreon.com/c/HenselPushers. McCann is also co-organizing Henselfest, a multi-day event of talks and music celebrating the life and work of Fanny Hensel. The inaugural Henselfest will bring together international Hensel scholars and performers and take place in April 2027 in Berkeley, California. For more information, or to join the mailing list, donate, or volunteer, please visit henselfest.org. We talk about the Hensel Pushers project in depth, how it came about and exactly what it offers. Of course we also explore the remarkable and much-too-short life of Fanny Hensel (Mendelssohn) (1805-1847). A few matters needed debunking, so we took care of that as well. For more information and to listen to some of Fanny's music, go to womenofnotes.substack.com where you can subscribe for free and become a part of the Women of Notes community. An opportunity to help fund the project is also available there for a paid subscription. You'll get advance notice about the episodes as well as other perks.