Bold choices highlighted music's unsung heroines

CLARE Hammond's Nottingham recitals are always keenly anticipated, not only because she grew up in the city but also because her programmes are always so imaginatively planned and executed.

- By WILLIAM RUFF

On Thursday the music was all French - not just by the usual suspects but featuring rarities by neglected women composers too.

She opened with three portraits by Mélanie Bonis of legendary women: Desdemona, Phoebe and Mélisande, music of great tenderness and jewel-like clarity, the subtle harmonies suggesting figures in a dream.

The music of Germaine Tailleferre is better known, although not as much as it should be.

Hers is music of graceful individuality, her taste for the neo-classical evident in the Partita which Clare played, its movements harking back to the world of Bach but steeped in the rhythms and harmonies of the 20th century.

At the recital's heart was rather more familiar music. Clare is the ideal exponent of Ravel's piano music.

Its complexities require a formidable technique - and Clare certainly has that. In fact, it was a joy to see her fingers at work in pieces which require some extraordinary digital gymnastics.