Festival 'Alba Rosa Viva' puts forgotten composer centre stage

This Sunday, September 28, Utrecht will host the one-day festival Alba Rosa Viva place, in honour of the 125^e birth anniversary of Alba Rosa Viëtor. Alba Rosa who?!!! Well, Alba Rosa Viëtor was an Italian violinist and composer who was born Alba Rosa in Milan in 1889. In 1919, she married Dutch businessman Jan Freseman Viëtor and in 1979, she died in Fort Lauderdale, just under ninety years old. During her lifetime, she celebrated triumphs on three different continents as a violinist and composer, but soon after her death she was forgotten.

To bring her music to the attention of the public again, her son Hendrik Viëtor (died in 2010) and her niece Mary van Veen-Viëtor (died in 2012) founded the Alba Rosa Viëtor Foundation in 2009. This tries to interest musicians, training institutes and concert organisers in her work and also initiated the book The Story of alba Rosa Viëtor, which appeared in 2009. This contains her own, remarkably smoothly written memoir and articles on her compositions by Ruby Tilanus, Peter Fraser MacDonald and Paul Janssen.

The book also includes a CD of five of her pieces, which illustrate well her craftsmanship. A musical maven she was not, but neither was she deaf to the latest developments. This is evident, for instance, in her spirited Violin Sonata from 1937. After its premiere, critics of the Times Herald and The Washington Post its "effective modernities" and "vivid, surprising twists", while the Evening Star describes how she "explores all the possibilities of the piano, in scope and in new combinations of intervals and timbres".

Also, the orchestral work Mediolanum from 1950 - which simultaneously recalls Debussy's impressionistic idiom and Shostakovich's incendiary sound world - received fine reviews. For instance, the Evening Star: 'The martial stride in the first movement suggested marching armies with its repeating drum beats. It spoke of victory and determination.' Mediolanum will be performed at the final concert by the Utrechtsch Studenten Concert, conducted by Bas Pollard.

It illustrates the ambition of the festival set up by pianist Reinild Mees. Not only does she want to put Viëtor's work back on the map during the festival, but she also wants to create continuity for this purpose. For instance, there is a composition competition for composers under the age of 35, with the jury including Willem Jeths. The seven finalists do include one woman, Mathilde Wantenaar, who in 2012 won the incentive prize from the MCN women's composition competition. There will also be improvisation workshops for young musicians and the festival will open with pianists under 16 performing works by Viëtor.

One of the highlights of the fest is the Sunday afternoon concert by the Storioni Trio, which performs piano trios by Clara Schumann, Alba Rosa Viëtor and her contemporary Rebecca Clarke; these are also on the new CD they present this afternoon. Clarke, by the way, was a contemporary of Viëtor who also combined (viola) violin playing with composing.

[Tweet "A CD dedicated entirely to female composers still stands out anno 2014"] A CD dedicated entirely to female composers still stands out in 2014, as most CDs only contain pieces by men. At the same time, this fine initiative gives food for thought, because even in the twenty-first century, why do we still put women's music in a separate corner?

In the CD booklet, the author regrets that these "gifted composers were inhibited from composing by their imposed role as women", but concludes that their music may sound more "feminine" than that of male colleagues. However well-intentioned, it is role-affirming and open-minded listening is out of the question after such an introduction.

And that is a pity, because Viëtor, Clarke and Schumann have mastered their métier perfectly. Fortunately, their work is interpreted unbiasedly and with verve by violinist Wouter Vossen, cellist Marc Vossen and pianist Bart van de Roer. Schumann's intense lyricism and melodic inventiveness are given a beautifully lived-in interpretation, and Clarke's at times dark and agitated Piano Trio has an infectious energy. The three gentlemen also manage to capture the heart of the atmosphere of Viëtor's Piano Trio in a minor, which switches between melancholy and jubilation.

This Sunday, Viëtor's music will be placed in the context of the times with songs by Grieg, Elgar and Poulenc, among others, performed by soprano Maria Fiselier, mezzo-soprano Laetitia Gerards and pianist Reinild Mees. The Utrechtsch Studenten Concert sets two orchestral works by Viëtor alongside orchestral music by Ravel and Prokofiev. Curious to see which music is perceived as 'masculine', which as 'feminine'.