Hélène de Montgeroult

 This morning on Radio 3 I heard a hauntingly beautiful piece for violin and piano which stopped me in my tracks. It turned out to be the slow movement of a violin sonata by Hélène de Montgeroult, a composer I'd heard of, but knew nothing about. Consulting Professor Wiki, I discovered that this was a woman who had a most remarkable life, being captured and imprisoned by Austrians in Piedmont in 1793, narrowly escaping the guillotine during the Reign of Terror in Paris, and going on to become the first woman professor of music at the Paris Conservatoire. She was a prodigious pianist, improviser and pedagogue, and a composer (at a time when women composers were something of a rarity) who, when she died in 1836, left behind a large body of work, mostly for piano, which is only now being rediscovered and recorded. Read more about her here...
And here is the piece I heard this morning.