Sage Gateshead/livestream
In the final concert of Sage Live 2020, the French composer’s rarely heard Third Symphony was conducted by Duncan Ward
Related: Symphony guide: Louise Farrenc’s Third
The Royal Northern Sinfonia’s autumn series of livestreamed concerts has made a point of including at least one rarely heard work in every programme, and in the last of them, conducted by Duncan Ward, that rarity was the Symphony No 3 in G minor by Louise Farrenc. A contemporary of Chopin, Mendelssohn and Schumann, Farrenc was an outstanding pianist and teacher as well as a composer, and her focus on writing chamber and orchestral works went against the main current of mid 19th-century French music, which was dominated by opera.