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We – musicians, scholars and the wider public – continue to be fascinated by musicians’ biographies. They function as a source of inspiration, admiration, as well as provocation.
In this talk, I focus on five musicians, all women pianists who enjoyed global careers. Not all of them were obviously ‘heroic’ or even successful in a traditional sense, but their biographies encourage us to rethink our definitions of a good life, both as musicians and as human beings.
Natasha Loges is Professor of Musicology at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. Her research interests include voice and keyboard repertoire, concert culture, gender and performance studies. Her books are Brahms and His Poets (2017) and a forthcoming biography, Pauline Viardot (2025). She has coedited the essay collections Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall (2014), Brahms in Context (2019), Musical Salon Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century (2019), German Song Onstage (2020). Three collections are forthcoming: Global Perspectives on Women Pianists and In a New Key: Studies of Women Pianists (forthcoming, 2025), as well as a collection of essays on global art song. She has published various chapters and essays in journals such as the Zeitschrift für Musiktheorie, 19th-Century Music, Participations and the Journal of the American Musicological Society; and she updated the article on Clara Schumann in Oxford Music Online. Her research has been funded by the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the American Musicological Society, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Royal Philharmonic Society, among others. A committed public musicologist, Natasha broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3 and has also broadcast for Südwestrundfunk and Bayerische Rundfunk. She writes for BBC Music Magazine and leads events for major festivals and venues including the Southbank Centre, Wigmore Hall, the Oxford Lieder Festival and Leeds Lieder in the UK, Liedfestival Zeist in Holland, Heidelberger Frühling, the Internationale Hugo-Wolf-Akademie Stuttgart and SongFest California. She is a member of the UK-based Equality and Diversity in Music Studies network, specialising in mentoring young mothers in research.