Carefully Cultivated Personae: Vienna & Paris: Women at the Keyboard, 1740–1875

Featuring Patricia Garcia Gil, Fortepianist

This program brings together four composers who navigated restrictive musical worlds by carefully curating not only their artistic identities but also their personal public images. Working in Vienna and Paris—two of Europe’s great cultural centers—they cultivated reputations that allowed them to create, publish, teach, and perform at the highest levels, while avoiding the scrutiny often directed toward ambitious women. Across two generations, Marianna Martines, Clara Wieck Schumann, Hélène de Nervo de Montgeroult, and Louise Dumont Farrenc built lives in music that challenged the limits of what women could achieve—and what they could be seen to desire. 

Now in its 27th year, the Catskill Mountain Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit organization which offers a variety of programs and workshops centered on the arts. It owns and runs The Orpheum Performing Arts Center, The Doctorow Center for the Arts (which includes the Mountain Cinema, a performance space, and the Piano Performance Museum), Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts, a Natural Agriculture farm and the Guide Magazine. The Foundation has long term partnership programs with The Joyce Theater Foundation, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, the National Dance Institute and Catskill Mountain Shakespeare, and is also home to the Hunter International Music Festival, The Academy of Fortepiano Performance, the Orpheum Dance Program, and the Maude Adams Theater Hub.