Boston University Concert on November 9 Spotlights Elfrida Andrée: Her Suffrage Cantata Will Get Its World Premiere Recording
Boston — Boston University, in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, announced on November 5 that its Symphony Orchestra and Treble Choirs will give a free concert on Monday, November 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, devoted to the Swedish organist and composer Elfrida Andrée (1841–1929). Sarah Ioannides, the College of Fine Arts' director of orchestral activities and associate professor of orchestral conducting, will conduct, and the concert is free and open to the public.
At the center of the program is the Suffrage Cantata, which Andrée wrote in 1911 for the International Woman Suffrage Alliance's conference in Stockholm. The 30-minute piece traces Swedish women's history and the fight for women's rights from the medieval period to the early 20th century. After the concert, the ensemble will record the work — the world premiere recording of the piece. Ioannides says the recording will likely serve as the only reference recording for professional orchestras that perform it in the future, and several other Andrée works on the November 9 program will receive their world or U.S. premieres.
At 20, Andrée and her father lobbied the Swedish government to change a law that barred unmarried women over 25 from being church organists. In 1867 she became the organist at Gothenburg Cathedral — the first woman in Sweden, let alone Europe, to hold such a position — and remained there until her death in 1929. Her large-scale, multimovement works were deemed unsuitable for women at the time, and after her death most of her music was never published as sheet music and rarely recorded, leaving her largely forgotten.
The program series, titled Breaking the Silence, is a collaboration between Ioannides, Daniel Parsley, director of choral activities in the School of Music, musicologist and Andrée expert Jonathan Spatola-Knoll, the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy, and other partners, and was preceded by a panel discussion on November 4. Soprano Kristine Nowlain of the Malmö Opera will sing as a soloist; she also gave the choirs Swedish lessons over video calls, as the singers had to learn the work in a language none of them had spoken before.
"What we're doing is rewriting history in a more true and honest way," Ioannides said. "By bringing Elfrida Andrée's music and story to a new audience, we're restoring a silenced voice." According to a Donne Foundation study, works by women composers accounted for only 4.5 percent of the music in global orchestra programming in 2025 and 2026. "It's not that there weren't women composers out there," Ioannides said. "The more silenced composers we uncover, the richer the canon becomes. Their music has always been there. Now it will be heard." (Source: Boston University)
Source: Boston University
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：波士顿大学 Tsai Performance Center 的舞台，乐团成员在演出前调弦准备。Dariusz Jemielniak 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The stage of Boston University's Tsai Performance Center, with orchestra members preparing. By Dariusz Jemielniak, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
