Esther Abrami: 'In 15 years of studying music I never played a single piece written by a woman'

The programme for her Harrogate date will include pieces from her most recent album, Cinéma, alongside Franck’s Sonata for violin and piano and works by female composers for whom she has become a strong advocate.

The Franck sonata has, she says, been one of her favourite works for years. “It’s so beautiful, just nice to play,” she tells The Yorkshire Post via video call from Paris, adding that she’s found audiences have been more responsive since she began talking to them about the pieces. “I realise how much of a difference it can make to try and make people understand what the piece is about and what I feel like when I’m playing it,” she says.

“I was invited to give a talk about music to over 2,000 business people and I took a little snippet of music from the Mendelssohn concerto and I played it to them first time then I said what probably happened was I played the first few notes and you thought ‘Oh, that’s pretty’ and then I played a bit longer and you probably thought about what you’re going to have for dinner tonight, so let me try this again. I tried to explain what I felt and what was the use of the notes, like here, he’s using this note to feel very emotional and he’s taking us with him and bringing us to the peak of the melody, then I played it to them again and the feedback I got was outstanding. People said ‘the first time it was nice, the second time we were tearing up because it suddenly felt so personal’.”

Amy Beach’s Romance and Angela Morley’s Reverie will also be included in the programme. “A key thing for me has been to bring female composers into all my concerts but also in my recordings,” Abrami says. “Again, I explain to people how in 15 years of studying music I never played a single piece written by a woman. In the curriculums that we had at school and in music colleges, the typical pieces we had to play that were supposed to build your violin repertoire didn’t include any works by women.

“Things are changing today but when I was studying – and that was not long ago – it wasn’t, so I graduated from the Conservatoire without having been taught a single piece written by a woman. I realised that and I went searching for them...and I discovered the Reverie and the Romance which I completely fell in love with.”

Abrami recorded the Romance on her debut album for Sony Classical and featured the Reverie on an EP of music by women composers. “I found it on Spotify it had 7,000 streams and I thought how can (it be that) a piece that is so beautiful, written for violin and string orchestra, and yet nobody knows this one? I recorded it with the HER Ensemble and I talked about Angela also on my social media and I’m so happy today that together with different streaming platforms we have over five million streams on this piece.

“I’m happy that through the community I’ve built on social media I’m able to have a real impact on things like that. People have requested the sheet music and wanted to play the pieces and I think that’s a very nice thing.”

The final selections will be from Cinéma, an album of which she says: “The idea has been to create a bridge to bring in people to listen to classical music. When we watch movies we turn off this part of our brain that says ‘this is classical so I won’t like it’. Some people say, ‘I only like listening to rock or whatever’, when we watch a movie we don’t think about that and we can be touched by any themes of the movie with the music that goes with it. It could be a horn solo and if it’s written in the right way together with the filming it will touch us.

“By doing this album, I selected films that I really love and music I love from the movies. I selected classical music that was used in films and I collaborated with some great composers like Rachel Portman and Anne Dudley. I was needing to have this human connection with them and they’re very inspiring people as well.

“But also by doing that I was invited on to big talk shows in France and big TV shows that have an audience of people who are not classical music listeners, and yet I got invited on there due to the fact that my album had this Cinéma title and also with my community online on social media etcetera. That means I’m able to access certain platforms where I can speak to people who would never listen to classical music otherwise and have the potential to bring them to my world.

“Also, in concerts it’s nice to have a variety of things and have some more fun pieces to listen to and generally I think it’s a great way to bring in people. I really don’t believe that somebody who doesn’t listen to classical music is going to wake up one day and say, ‘I want to listen to a Mahler symphony’. We need a process in order to make it happen. I think the potential is there for everyone to have at least one track of classical music on their playlist because people do like it when you approach it in the right way and they will have certain times of the day, certain moods where they will want to listen to this type of music.”

Esther Abrami plays at the Crown Hotel, Harrogate on Wednesday July 10 at 7.30pm.