Famed for her operas, the trailblazing queer Victorian composer Ethel Smyth was a socialite, intrepid traveller and committed Suffragette.
A talented violist, Rebecca Clarke was one of the first women hired by a professional orchestra and was later known for her modernist experimentation. Dorothy Howell was a prodigy who shot to fame at the 1919 Proms, gained a reputation as the ‘English Strauss’ and tended Elgar’s grave. Doreen Carwithen was one of Britain’s first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II’s coronation film, and whose success hid an affair with her married composition tutor. Quartet resurrects these voices and celebrates their musical masterpieces.