1807 & Friends: Forgotten woman composer

Madeline Lombardini-Syrmen belongs to the small company of women who forged careers as composers during the 18th Century despite the formidable barriers society placed in their path. She started her musical career in one of those Italian orphanages where young women acquired skills that would help them nab good husbands. She studied violin with Vivaldi, Tartini and other masters and contracted an ideal marriage to another violinist, whom she joined in public concerts throughout Europe. Eventually, she performed her own compositions.

Lombardini-Syrmen enjoyed some fame in her own time, but after she died her work slipped out of sight and languished in the archives, like the work of hundreds of other 18th-Century composers.

Nancy Bean, artistic director of 1807 & Friends, heard about Lombardini-Syrmen when a board member raved about a string quartet he had heard. Bean tried to track it down and eventually discovered, to her surprise, that she could obtain a copy in her own back yard: A Philadelphia outfit called Hildegard Publishers is dedicated to locating and publishing the works of women composers.

Since Lombardini-Syrmen flourished during the second half of the 18th-Century, she should be considered an early Classical composer rather than a Baroque composer. The opening movement of her two-movement second string quartet is built around a winning, beautifully varied theme and should appeal to anyone who enjoys Mozart's quartets. The second movement begins with a rush, as the instruments enter one at a time, and alternates repeats of the rush with passages that range from the winsome to the haunting.

Lombardini-Syrmen seems to have been a notably economical composer. Both movements fulfill the old show business maxim that you should always leave the audience hungry for more.

Oboe's critical difference

1807 followed the Lombardini-Syrmen with a piece that was almost as unusual: Sir Arthur Bliss's 1926 quintet for oboe and string quartet, with Richard Woodhams, the Philadelphia Orchestra's principal oboist, as guest.

Bliss played with a tune called "Connelly's Jig" in the third movement of his quintet, but he obviously wasn't trying to add another piece to the English pastoral tradition. His opening movement creates a shifting, restless dreamscape. Dark string music contrasts with the thinner sound of the oboe. The strings dominate the movement, but none of it would make sense without the oboe, and a single extended note on the oboe brings the movement to a perfect close.

The oboe opens the second movement with a singing line, but Bliss again avoided any suggestion that he might have been aiming for a pastoral mood. He produced music that's deeper and more reflective, with a triumphant middle section that returns the strings to the foreground. The "Connelly's Jig" movement ends the quintet with a virtuoso flourish without disrupting the piece's essential seriousness.

Bliss wrote his quintet for a renowned British oboist, Leon Goossens. It requires a master oboist framed by a strong quartet. The Wister Quartet musicians and their guest fulfilled both requirements.

DvoÅ™ák's dark sound

The evening ended with one of the most popular works in the repertoire, DvoÅ™ák's "American" quartet. DvoÅ™ák gave the first violin and the cello some beautiful interludes, especially in the second movement lament, but much of the mood of the piece stems from the viola's dark sound and the alto timbre of the second violin. Violist Pamela Faye and second violin Davyd Booth worked at the top of their form from the moment the viola introduced the first notes of the first movement.