The Palouse Trio features women composers

Women in art have historically had a difficult time getting the praise and recognition for their work, but thanks to three WSU music professors, audiences will have the chance to hear those unheard voices.

The Palouse Trio will give a performance as a part of the School of Music’s Faculty Artist Series at 8 p.m. today in Bryan Hall Theatre, highlighting the works of female composers Luise Adolpha Le Beau and Clara Schumann alongside the works of Johannes Brahms.

“The fact is, (female composers) still studied with someone, and often times they were studying with these big composers,” said cellist and music professor Ruth Boden. “The approach to the music is very much the same.”

The Palouse Trio consists of the current WSU cello, violin and piano professors, which has been performing around the Palouse for the last couple of decades.

The program was the brainchild of violinist and music professor Meredith Arksey, who has been working on her own to revive the work of Le Beau, Boden said. The group came to consensus to share the performance spotlight with distinguished, albeit less well-known composers, Le Beau and Schumann.

“I don’t think there is anything that makes their music distinctly female. They’re all just very good composers,” Arksey said. “I think because they were female they weren’t as celebrated during their lifetimes as Brahms was, but I believe that they certainly deserve to be played and heard by audiences.”

The program offers a unique perspective on the connectedness of the community of composers in German Romanticism.

“It’s like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” Boden said. “Le Beau studied with Clara Schumann for an entire summer, and then Clara Schumann and her husband, Robert, were great encouragers of a very young Brahms. They helped encourage him to follow his composition. It all kind of comes back to Brahms.”

Pianist and music professor Karen Savage said the crossover of female and male composing was much more common than people may think, with big names like the Mendelssohns and the Schumanns possibly collaborating and publishing works under the male composer’s name for better exposure.

“Which actually makes it more exciting in some ways because we can pioneer. That’s one of Dr. Arksey’s projects, to uncover and perform more of Le Beau’s works because they are really fine works and stand up on their own,” Savage said. “I think a lot of women … had tremendous challenges being treated seriously.”

The musicians agreed that Le Beau’s works formidably hold their own, and are not without their share of challenges.

“It is big, gigantic, German romantic music,” Boden said. “Some of the passage work for the cello is just gnarly. And gnarly for the piano, too. And the Brahms is the same way.”

Clocking in at just more than an hour for all three pieces, Boden said the size of the program is considerable and full of substantial, rich music.

“Everything in this concert, the entire concert is appealing music,” Arksey said. “There are beautiful lyrical sections and exciting rhythmic sections, and hearing the Le Beau, probably for the first time, will be a wonderful experience for the audience.”

All three professors encouraged students and community members to come and listen to the beautiful sounds of great artists, familiar and fresh alike.