Los Angeles based pianist Nancy Fierro, known for her championship of women composers, has recorded and performed in concert a number of works by Polish composers. A longtime fan of music by Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969), and a friend of her late sister, Wanda, Fierro recorded Bacewicz’s monumental Second Piano Sonata some years ago. Fierro also recorded much of solo piano music by Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831), a brilliant pianist and composer, who toured Europe and befriended the three great romantic poets (Goethe, Pushkin, Mickiewicz) in addition to being a colleague of such influential musicians as Cherubini, Hummel and Field.
Nancy Fierro’s recent efforts to place some of her CD tracks online in downloadable form were only partially successful, with only Maria Szymanowska’s music now available on Apple Music and Spotify. Alas, the 1953 Sonata by Bacewicz ran into some mechanical licensing issues with the publishers in Poland and could not be made available on any electronic platforms, at least for the time being.
In the meantime, Fierro’s album, Riches and Rags, features an assortment of Szymanowska’s piano music including two Nocturnes, nine Mazurkas, and two Etudes. The album also contains works by Maria Hester Parke, Clara Schumann, May Aufderheide, Mary Baugh Watson, Gladys Yelvington, Adeline Sheperd and Irene Giblin. It can be downloaded at: https://open.spotify.com/album/2JymHQRvRgoCDnqlMpKBYp?si=WNY6FRM1R7uUDj6hT3XAzg&nd=1
[Sources: press release, spotify.com]