Every so often a recording arrives that feels less like a product and more like an act of restoration. That is the spirit behind the news out of the United Kingdom this month: the Scottish pianist and writer Susan Tomes has begun rolling out tracks from her Hyperion solo debut, an album that shares the title of her celebrated book, Women and the Piano.
As a pianist who spends her life inside this repertoire, I find this quietly thrilling. Tomes is best known as a chamber musician of the highest order, and this project turns her attention to voices that most of us were never handed as students.
A recording built on a simple, stinging observation
Tomes has framed the whole enterprise around a line that should stop any conservatoire graduate in their tracks. Throughout her training as a pianist, she has said, no teacher ever suggested she learn a work by a woman composer. That absence is the engine of the album.
The programme is not a niche curiosity. It spans 250 years of piano history and sets familiar names such as Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Cécile Chaminade and Amy Beach in dialogue with genuine discoveries. The idea of a dialogue matters here. Placing the known beside the unknown is how neglected music finds its way back into the ear.
The discoveries worth hearing
The lesser-known figures are where the curiosity sharpens. The album includes a sonata by Marianne Martínez, who was Haydn's earliest piano pupil, a caprice by the Polish virtuoso Maria Szymanowska, a romance by Sophie Menter, said to be Liszt's favourite pupil, and Teresa Carreño's Un bal en rêve, which appears to anticipate the tune of Happy Birthday by some thirty years. The programme closes with music by Raie da Costa, one of the best-known light-music pianists of her day.
There is real curatorial thought in the shape of it too. By choosing shorter works, Tomes makes room for as many voices as possible rather than devoting the disc to one or two large statements. For listeners meeting these names for the first time, that generosity is exactly right.
How the release is unfolding
Rather than a single drop, the album is arriving in stages. Hyperion released a first taster in early August, a short video filmed during the sessions of Tomes playing Clara Schumann's Notturno, with a second track following on 28 August and a third on 18 September. The complete album is due on 9 October, available on CD, on streaming platforms and through the Hyperion website, with Tomes writing the programme notes herself.
That last detail says a great deal about her. Tomes is the author of eight books, and her 2024 study Women and the Piano, which this album accompanies, was named one of the best books of the year by outlets including the Financial Times and the New Yorker. Few musicians can play and write about a subject with equal authority.
Why this lands for working pianists
The recording carries weight partly because of who is making it. Tomes was the first woman admitted to study music at King's College, Cambridge, has made over fifty discs, and has won three Gramophone Awards and a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. When a musician of that standing devotes a solo debut to overlooked repertoire, programmers and teachers tend to listen.
For me, projects like this are a standing invitation to widen my own recital programmes. A Szymanowska caprice or a Chaminade character piece can sit beautifully alongside the canon, and audiences respond to the sense of discovery. If you enjoy hearing the familiar repertoire refreshed by unexpected neighbours, I would love to welcome you to one of my recitals or chamber concerts. You can explore upcoming dates and enquire about bookings at yinghopiano.com.
Tomes' album is a reminder that the piano's history is broader than the shelf of standard editions many of us grew up with. Come October, we will all have a chance to hear how much richer that history really is.
