Women of Notes

Canadian violinist and researcher, Dr. Jennifer Martyn joins me for a conversation about the brilliant Swedish violinist, composer, organist and pianist, Amanda Maier, sometimes known as Amanda Röntgen. A stellar composer and performer; her music really deserves to be in the standard repertoire. Be sure to go to the substack (link below) where there are several links to recordings. Among her close associates and friends were Brahms, the Herzogenbergs, the Griegs, Smyth, Joachim, and Clara Schumann.

Listen to the end for Sandra's entrepreneurial idea to honour Amanda Maier. 🍮🍬

Jennifer Martyn enjoys a busy career as performer, teacher, and researcher. She holds degrees in violin performance from the University of Toronto (BMus, DMA), and Mannes College (MMus) in New York City. Dr. Martyn has performed with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kingston, Ottawa, Niagara, and Windsor Symphonies, l’Ensemble Prisme, Consortium Aurora Borealis, and the Talisker Players, and in 2024 joined the violin section of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra. A sought-after teacher and adjudicator, Martyn loves to work with children, both as a violin teacher and a choir director. She currently teaches privately and directs the Trinity United Church youth choir in Thunder Bay.

In her research at the University of Toronto, Martyn focused on the life and career of the nineteenth-century Swedish violinist and composer Amanda Maier and received numerous awards for her work. She has presented lecture-recitals in Ottawa, Toronto, and Calgary, and in 2017 performed the Canadian premiere of Maier’s 1891 piano quartet. Martyn has contributed to the Library of Congress Performing Arts blog “In the Muse” and has been interviewed about her research for several radio programmes, including BBC Radio 3 programme “Composer of the Week.”

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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/

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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

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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).

www.mariastratigou.com

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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.

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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

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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.

Sarah Fritz is a musicologist, mezzo-soprano, and music historian who’s contributed to the New York Times, given pre-concert talks for the Philadelphia Orchestra, and appears in the PBS documentary, Mozart’s Sister. She runs the Clara Schumann Channel platform, dedicated to educating the public about women composers, and performs with the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Symphonic Choir, including an appearance in the choir scene of the movie Maestro. Fritz teaches on the faculty of the Westminster Conservatory in Princeton, New Jersey.

We discuss how Clara Schumann’s compositions deserve to be heard and studied on their own merits. Clara’s achievements were often discussed in relation to her husband Robert Schumann, even though she was internationally famous and hugely influential in her own right. Then there is all the conjecture about whether she and Johannes Brahms had an affair? This episode goes into depth about all that Clara Schumann was, as well as debunking some of the long-held narratives about her.

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Episode 0: The Women of Notes Trailer with your host Sandra Mogensen, who you may know from the 'Piano Music She Wrote' project. Deep dives on the lives, stories, creative processes, and music of women who compose and women who composed. Weekly episodes of Season 1 begin on September 13, 2026.

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