Decca Records is releasing a collection of previously unrecorded poems and music created by women involved in the British suffrage movement. The Lost Women of Music is released today, 8 March, to coincide with International Women’s Day.
The Lost Women of Music includes hymns, speeches, poetry, instrumentals and other compositions.
Compositions include Ethel Smyth’s Laggard Dawn and March of the Women (Smyth was the first woman to have her work performed at the Metropolitan Opera); Alicia Needham’s Daughters of England; and Katharine Eggar’s Idyll.
As for the texts, Claire Balding reads Laura Grey’s To D R In Holloway; Helen Pankhurst reads her grandmother Sylvia Pankhurst’s Writ On Cold Slate; and Penelope Keith reads Emmeline Parkhurst’s speech Kill Me or Give Me My Freedom, to a score by Juliette Pochin.