Chamber Music Festival showcases women composers
The 2025 Hastings Chamber Music Festival presents its most ambitious and varied programme to date, offering a vibrant mix of four chamber music concerts spanning an impressive 350 years of repertoire, from the Baroque to the contemporary. This year’s festival will show both established musicians and emerging talent, proudly also featuring a strong representation of works by female composers, on the theme of ‘Resounding Nature’.
The Hermes Experiment
The Festival opens with Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen (arranged for septet), performed by the Felix Ensemble. Apollo’s Cabinet presents a dedicated early music performance, paired with Elements, a newly commissioned work by Brighton-born polymath, Orlando Gough. The Hermes Experiment, a renowned contemporary ensemble, presents a richly varied programme, ranging from the Baroque elegance of Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre to contemporary voices Errollyn Wallen and Caroline Shaw.
SOME COMPOSER NOTES
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre was born in 1665 into a prominent musical family and noticed by Louis XIV when she was only five. She became a musician in his court, writing music under his patronage. She wrote prolifically, in a wide variety of forms, and was one of very few female composers to gain popularity during her lifetime. American Caroline Shaw, born in 1982, played the violin from when she was two years old and composed her first piece at 10. Errollyn Wallen’s name is well-known in the UK. She is the first Black woman to be appointed Master of the King’s Music (by King Charles) and writes music in an astonishing variety of different genres. Also trained as a dancer in New York, after turning to composition, she studied at Goldsmith’s College and Cambridge.
The festival closes with a special appearance by renowned composer Sally Beamish, who will also take part in a pre-concert ‘Artists in Conversation’ event. The evening culminates in the Rautio Trio’s performance of her evocative piece, The Seafarer. It’s a setting of an Anglo-Saxon poem and was inspired by a set of monoprints by the artist Jila Peacock. ‘Artists in Conversation’ and ‘Open Rehearsal’ events are also programmed, providing unique opportunities for audiences to engage with artists and gain deeper insights into the creative process.
RECLAIMING THE ARTS
This significant festival is part of a more general movement reclaiming the artistic and musical work of women throughout cultural history; this very brief examination shows how exceptional these women are. To break through the gender barrier, they needed (and some would argue, still need) to be twice as good as their male counterparts. During the last twenty years I have heard the music of Amy Beach, Ethel Smyth, Florence Price, Louise Farrenc, Cécile Chaminade, Judith Weir and many others for the first time. It is heartening to know that this is happening in music as well as in fine art, that the wonderful and complex work of excellent women composers is now finally coming into its own.
The Hastings Chamber Music Festival, directed by Jane Gordon, takes place from 23-26 October, in both Christ Church and The Kino in St Leonards. Full details and tickets from hemf.co.uk/festival-2025
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