This fascinating collection of rare and distinctive piano works, from the 18th century to the present, is inspired by stories of how women composers created music while meeting the expectations of family and society. Hiroko Ishimoto brings together a remarkably varied programme including works by Ana Bon who was ‘chamber music virtuosa’ at the Prussian court of King Frederick the Great, the bold harmonies of Vítĕzslava Kaprálová (a student of Martinů), as well as pieces by Amy Beach based on the calls of the hermit thrush, and so much more.

Hiroko Ishimoto studied at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo and The Juilliard School in New York where her professor was György Sándor, the great Hungarian-American pianist and leading pupil of Béla Bartók. Her YouTube series of essays and performances of Women Composers in the Shadows of Men has garnered worldwide attention, and she gave Japanese concert tours of these works organised by WAN in 2017 and 2018, and Japanese radio station NHK FM broadcast her performance of works by Amy Beach nationwide in 2017. She regularly gives performances of this project in Hungary and Japan. She has also been interviewed in major Japanese newspapers the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun. Highly acclaimed by The New York Times and Japanese magazine The World of Music, Ishimoto also devotes time to her piano students, and currently resides in Budapest.