Women are an essential part of the history of the piano—but how many women pianists can you
name? Throughout most of the piano’s history women pianists lacked access to formal
training and were excluded from male-dominated performance spaces. Even the modern piano’s keys
were designed without consideration of women’s typically smaller hands. Yet despite their music
being largely confined to the domestic sphere women continued to play perform and compose on
their own terms. Celebrated pianist and author Susan Tomes traces fifty such women across
the piano’s history. Including now-famous names such as Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn
Tomes also highlights overlooked women: from Hélène de Montgeroult whose playing saved her
life during the French Revolution to Leopoldine Wittgenstein influential Viennese salonnière
and Hazel Scott the first Black performer in the United States to have a nationally syndicated
TV show. From Maria Szymanowska to Nina Simone and including interviews with women
performing today this is a much-needed corrective to our understanding of the piano—and a
timely testament to women’s musical lives.
