Vogel/Cesetti - Elfrida Andr�e, Mel Bonis, Ethel Smyth: First Ladies: Three Romantic Violin Sonatas

One could hardly intuit from these fresh and flowing violin sonatas the obstacles their female composers had to face � family opposition for Mel Bonis in France and Ethel Smyth in England, professional bigotry for Elfrida Andr�e in Sweden. It has taken a century and more for that initial prejudice to fall away, and they are now beginning to attract a fair hearing for their music. What ultimately matters, of course, is not whether composers are male or female but whether they write good music, and these three sonatas � melodically expansive, rhythmically vivacious, harmonically warm � point to the musical riches that further exploration of their creators� output will uncover.