Louise Farrenc may not be a household name in the twenty-first century, but in her own lifetime she enjoyed a career of international standing. She was an accomplished pianist, a valued teacher at the Paris Conservatoire and in the latter part of her life, she devoted the majority of her time to the preparation of a groundbreaking anthology of keyboard music dating from the 16th to the 19th century.

She was born in 1804, a year before Fanny Hensel, Felix Mendelssohn's older sister. However the fifty plus published works that make up her legacy, immediately set her apart. While the majority of her contemporaries had a tendency to focus on smaller forms, songs, choral works and salon pieces for the piano, Farrenc's creative interests involved writing music for much larger combinations of instruments, including quintets, a sextet, a nonet , orchestral overtures and three symphonies.

That's not to say she never contributed to vocal music. Research into Farrenc's extant legacy has established a small collection of her largely unpublished vocal works does exist. For the first time, especially for Composer of the Week, soprano Ruby Hughes, a former Radio 3 New Generation Artist and pianist Anna Tilbrook have recorded four of Farrenc's songs. The BBC Singers, under conductor David Hill have recorded the only two choral settings known to exist. There's an opportunity to hear these vocal rarities spread across the week.

Donald Macleod begins his survey by examining the context of Louise Farrenc's life. Paris born, she remained in the capital, a centre of musical excellence, her whole life. In addition to keyboard and chamber output, there's a glimpse of her vocal writing too, in the ballad Andréa le Folle, heard for the first time in a recording made specially for Composer of the Week. Show less