Women are an essential part of the history of the pianobut how many women pianists can you name?

Throughout most of the pianos history, women pianists lacked access to formal training and were excluded from male-dominated performance spaces. Even the modern pianos keys were designed without consideration of womens 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 pianos history. Including now-famous names such as Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn, Tomes also highlights overlooked women: from Helene de Montgeroult, whose playing saved her life during the French Revolution, to Leopoldine Wittgenstein, influential Viennese salonniere, 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 pianoand a timely testament to womens musical lives.