Global Perspectives on Women Pianists

Pathbreaking study that explores the piano as an instrument of globalism, colonialism and mobility and what this meant for women pianists from around the world.

This volume surveys women pianists across a broad geohistorical range, exploring how gender and place intersected in their lives. It focuses on the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries - years that witnessed sustained interest in piano performance, both onstage and in recording, against a backdrop of technological and socio-political transformation. This extended from the 1848 revolutions, through two World Wars, to the decline of colonialism and the rise of second-wave feminism in its various guises.

The authors range from established to emerging scholars, from the USA, Western and Eastern Europe including Russia and Türkiye, South America, East Asia, and Africa. They take diverse approaches to the piano as an instrument of globalism, colonialism, class, and mobility, within women's lives. These include explorations of mapping, networks, and cultural transfer; feminist examinations of archival traces, including encyclopaedias; the implications of distinctive geographies and socio-political conditions; and the links between gender and genre, including contemporary and experimental musics. The volume offers a bold account of global approaches to women in music and encourages innovative ways of considering piano culture more generally.

List of contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

List of Music Examples

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: On the Global Trail of Women Pianists
Joe Davies & Natasha Loges


Part 1: East Asia to Africa
Chapter 1 | Re-Hearing the First Generation of Twentieth-Century Chinese Women Pianists
Ji Liu

Chapter 2 | 'Women Can Hold Up Half the Sky': Maoist Feminism and Class Politics in the Career of Gu Shengying
Zixi Ren

Chapter 3 | The Musical Fusion of East and West: Deh-Fang Swen Lai's Piano Works
Li-Ming Pan

Chapter 4 | Shifting Meanings of Piano Playing for Women in Late Ottoman and Republican Turkey
Gülçin Özki¿i

Chapter 5 | A Tale of Two Pianos: Women Egyptian Pianists in the Twentieth Century
Nahla Mattar


Part 2: Russia to Eastern Europe

Chapter 6 | Mapping Russian Female Pianists (1850-1917): From Sabinina to Scriabina
Marina Frolova-Walker

Chapter 7 | On the Move: Women Pianist-Composers from Finland and Estonia from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century
Nuppu Koivisto-Kaasik & Susanna Välimäki

Chapter 8 | (Un)silencing Czech Nineteenth-Century Women Pianists
Anja Bunzel

Chapter 9 | The 'Misses' of the Romanian Piano Scene: Threads of the German Pedagogical Tradition in Bucharest
Valentina Sandu-Dediu


Part 3: Across Western Europe

Chapter 10 | Delphine von Schauroth, Class, and the Path of the Artist
Amanda Lalonde

Chapter 11 | Women Recording Piano Rolls: A Case Study on Philipps Duca
Thomas Betzwieser

Chapter 12 | Narrating Women Pianists' Careers in Interwar France through Simone Plé's Le Rôle des femmes dans les carrières musicales
Apolline Gouzi and Arthur Macé

Chapter 13 | The Transantlantic Lives of Gaby Casadesus
Gabriele Slizyte

Chapter 14 | Harriet Cohen's British-Jewish Identity on the International Stage
Danielle Roman


Part 4: South to North America

Chapter 15 | 'Make Way, I'm Coming Through': The Legacy of Chiquinha Gonzaga
Joao Martins

Chapter 16 | Marie Majoie Hajary: A Surinamese Family History as Podium Identity and Source of Inspiration
Ellen de Vries

Chapter 17 | Rosa García Ascot: Spanish Pianist-Composer and Exile
Margaret Lucia

Chapter 18 | Visibility, Historiography, and Gender: Gwendolyn Koldofsky's Impact on North American Song Accompaniment
Chanda VanderHart

Chapter 19 | Flourishing Musical Lives and the Impact of Enduring Relationships: Grete Sultan and Tui St George Tucker
Reeves Shulstad

About the author

Edited by Joe Davies and Natasha Loges

Product details

• Authors: Joe Davies, Natasha Loges
• Assisted by: Joe Davies (Editor), Natasha Loges (Editor)
• Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 01.03.2026
• EAN: 9781837652037
• ISBN: 978-1-83765-203-7
• No. of pages: 384
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories