Unheard Heritage revives great, forgotten music for new audiences.
We research unrecorded repertoire, collaborate with performers to create high quality recordings, and then work with writers to bring the composers' stories to life. If a composition we record has not been previously published, we work to get our performance edition published so the piece will be accessible to other performers. Our work gives promoters and performers the information they need to programme these works themselves, helping previously neglected pieces to stay in the repertoire.
All our albums are available to buy from Resonus Classics, or to stream.
Why?
Right now, we regularly hear only a fraction of the music that was written in the past. We want to give audiences and performers access to more, changing what classical music can be.
Narrow repertoire is partly a practical problem. Few concert programmers will schedule music they don’t know and have never heard. If a piece wasn’t published, it’s extremely difficult for performers to access, especially if the manuscript is hard to find or in an unknown location. If there’s no score, it can’t be played or recorded, so audiences can’t hear it. Even if a printed score does exist, if a work hasn’t been recorded it can’t be widely listened to. And if there's very little accurate biographical information available about a composer, it makes it hard to know how to place their music.
This also makes narrow repertoire a collective action problem. There are many people who need to get involved to redress centuries of neglect. To bring an unpublished, unrecorded work to the point where it can get a foothold in the repertoire, you need editors to work on a performance edition, performers to play the work, researchers to understand the composer, publishers to distribute the score, and journalists and broadcasters to raise awareness of the piece.
Unheard Heritage solves this problem through collaboration, bringing together research, performance and storytelling. Our high quality recordings are the point where this collaborative work comes together, giving lost masterpieces a chance to be heard at their best.
We focus mainly on music by women because historically, women’s work was far less likely to have been performed and published than comparable music by men. Even though women have been composing for centuries, and were often extremely famous as composers in their own lifetimes, they are vastly under-represented in the concert hall now. Only 7.5% of orchestral pieces performed worldwide are written by women. Making high-quality recordings of women’s compositions, especially their large orchestral and vocal works, is a priority if we want that to change.
We research unrecorded repertoire, collaborate with performers to create high quality recordings, and then work with writers to bring the composers' stories to life. If a composition we record has not been previously published, we work to get our performance edition published so the piece will be accessible to other performers. Our work gives promoters and performers the information they need to programme these works themselves, helping previously neglected pieces to stay in the repertoire.
All our albums are available to buy from Resonus Classics, or to stream.
Why?
Right now, we regularly hear only a fraction of the music that was written in the past. We want to give audiences and performers access to more, changing what classical music can be.
Narrow repertoire is partly a practical problem. Few concert programmers will schedule music they don’t know and have never heard. If a piece wasn’t published, it’s extremely difficult for performers to access, especially if the manuscript is hard to find or in an unknown location. If there’s no score, it can’t be played or recorded, so audiences can’t hear it. Even if a printed score does exist, if a work hasn’t been recorded it can’t be widely listened to. And if there's very little accurate biographical information available about a composer, it makes it hard to know how to place their music.
This also makes narrow repertoire a collective action problem. There are many people who need to get involved to redress centuries of neglect. To bring an unpublished, unrecorded work to the point where it can get a foothold in the repertoire, you need editors to work on a performance edition, performers to play the work, researchers to understand the composer, publishers to distribute the score, and journalists and broadcasters to raise awareness of the piece.
Unheard Heritage solves this problem through collaboration, bringing together research, performance and storytelling. Our high quality recordings are the point where this collaborative work comes together, giving lost masterpieces a chance to be heard at their best.
We focus mainly on music by women because historically, women’s work was far less likely to have been performed and published than comparable music by men. Even though women have been composing for centuries, and were often extremely famous as composers in their own lifetimes, they are vastly under-represented in the concert hall now. Only 7.5% of orchestral pieces performed worldwide are written by women. Making high-quality recordings of women’s compositions, especially their large orchestral and vocal works, is a priority if we want that to change.