With this recording by Ian Hobson, the music of Kate Loder (1825–1904) is now available to listeners for the first time. Accessible in both CD and electronic formats from Toccata Classics, it makes a very welcome addition to our knowledge of music by nineteenth-century British musicians and to the growing collection of repertoire by women Victorian composers. In addition, the album expands upon Hobson's previous recordings of composers resident in London from the late Georgian through the mid-Victorian eras: three volumes of the London Pianoforte School (Arabesque Recordings), piano concertos by Ignaz Moscheles (Zephyr Records), and most recently, piano music by Edward Loder (Toccata Classics).

The project grew from scholarship about members of the Loder family recently published in Musicians of Bath and Beyond: Edward Loder (1809–1865) and His Family, edited by Nicholas Temperley.Footnote ¹ Kate's uncle, celebrated violinist John David Loder (1788–1846), was a Professor at the Royal College of Music, London. Her cousin Edward James Loder (1809–1865), J.D. Loder's son, attained distinction as a composer, particularly of operas. Kate's half-brother George Loder (1816–1868) brought his skills as a conductor, composer, pianist and music director to the United States and Australia during the 1850s and 1860s. Other family members of lesser renown taught or operated a music business in Bath. So when Kate showed an aptitude for music as a young child, the resources were readily at hand to guide her development. Early training in Bath, from a Miss Batterbury and later from Henry Field (1797–1848), prepared her for entrance into the Royal Academy of Music in 1839. Lucy Philpot Anderson, piano teacher to Queen Victoria and another Bath native, oversaw her piano studies. Kate exhibited an interest in composing and took advantage of the opportunity to study theory and composition at the Academy, primarily with George Macfarren. Shortly after graduation, she became the first woman professor of harmony at that institution. By 1848, critics who believed ‘England is not poor in female composers’ singled out Loder among such other contemporaries as Caroline Orger Reinagle, Emma Macfarren and Clara Angela Macirone.Footnote ² Her marriage in 1851 to Henry Thompson, a surgeon, eventually led to her retirement from public performance in 1854. Nevertheless, she performed privately on occasion and continued to teach and to compose.

This recording provides a solid representation of her solo piano compositions from the 1850s to 1890s. We know of 42 works by Loder, either from a surviving score or a contemporary reference. They comprise an incomplete opera, chamber works, piano and organ works, and songs. Her piano output ranges from duets for beginners to studies for advanced players. Of her 30 compositions that are known to be extant, 11 are for solo piano: two sets of Twelve Studies for the Piano Forte, character pieces, as well as two mazurkas and a scherzo from her final years. The album's booklet notes by Nicholas Temperley offer a useful summary of Loder's career in addition to informative commentary on the seven recorded pieces.

Hobson's skilful performance of the Studies reveals a composer who is both technically proficient and harmonically adventurous. Following in the tradition of studies by other London residents of the era, including those by John Baptist Cramer, Ignaz Moscheles, and Cipriani Potter, Loder's compositions offer not only exercises to increase technical prowess but also lyricism to hone interpretative skills. Neither set contains a noteworthy sequence of keys, nor does any study move beyond a key signature of three flats or four sharps (with one exception: Book 2, No. 7 in B-flat minor). The first set (1852), dedicated to Lucy Anderson, offers works that address arpeggios, octaves, sprightly right-hand triplets, rapidly repeating notes, inner-voice sharing of melody, and consecutive thirds. Hobson adroitly expresses moods that vary from crisply technical exercises to more fluid, dramatic songs. The second set of Studies (1853), dedicated to George Macfarren, comprises generally more demanding compositions with expanded structures that produce a volume whose length is double that of Book 1. A number of these later studies fit comfortably into the category of ‘songs without words’. For example, in No. 4 in A major a left-hand accompaniment underpins thirds and sixths from the right hand, while No. 5 in A minor shifts to a more melancholy mood. A similar atmosphere occurs in No. 7 in B-flat minor, which is enlivened by nearly continuous use of trills and runs, and in No. 10 in G minor, with fiery material that surrounds a lyrical B section. No. 12 in F-sharp minor, which Temperley describes as ‘a study in name only, being essentially a romantic song’, brings the set to an effectively lyrical conclusion. A grouping of several of these studies would make a suitable and pleasing addition to a recital programme.

Three Romances (1853), dedicated to sisters presumed to be her students (Ladies Susan, Constance and Victoria Murray), are less difficult but nonetheless appealing compositions. Walter Macfarren, brother of George and professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music, regarded them worthy to play at one of his recitals (1865).Footnote ³ Each romance features a lyrical melody in the right hand over broken chordal figurations. For this album, Hobson presents the most interesting of the three: Romance No. 2 in A-flat, in which a developmental B section presents melodic material that is imitated between both hands as the music modulates to the mediant minor. Pensée fugitive in A-flat (1858) is a particularly beautiful piece, reminiscent of the style of John Field. Hobson delivers a tender performance that avoids any descent into sentimentality. More demanding technically than the Romance, its glittery arpeggiated figuration conveys the ‘fleeting’ mood of its descriptive title. For the Voyage joyeux (c. 1868), one of two self-proclaimed romance sans paroles, Hobson maintains a rippling triplet accompaniment under a lyrical soprano line, a texture favoured by Loder. The second romance sans paroles, Songe d'une nuit d’été, is not on this recording despite its notable performance history: Jane Jackson Roeckel played it in a concert series in 1885 devoted to music by women composers, including Agnes Zimmermann, Fanny Hensel and Clara Schumann.

This recording concludes with two mazurkas from the 1890s. The Mazurka in A minor, published in The Girl's Own Paper on 23 May 1896, requires a very competent pianist, thus attesting to the musical skills of the journal's readership. Although it exhibits the influence of Chopin's mazurkas, the piece contains startling interruptions by brief runs or arpeggios. Melodic and harmonic chromaticism give this stylized dance an exotic feel that Hobson conveys very effectively. The Mazurka in B minor (1899), by contrast, presents a simpler, straightforward dance. It and a companion piece, Scherzo (1899), are dedicated to Loder's longstanding colleague and friend Walter Macfarren.

Shortly after the Mazurka and Scherzo's publication, J.A. Fuller Maitland authored a history of nineteenth-century English music in which he counted Loder as ‘one of the country's distinguished native pianists’, declaring her a precursor to such other prominent performers as Agnes Zimmermann, Fanny Davies and Leonard Borwick.Footnote ⁴ Composer and conductor Sir Landon Ronald, one of Loder's private composition students, remembered her in his 1922 memoirs as ‘a magnificent musician’.Footnote ⁵ With this first-rate recording by Ian Hobson, listeners at last have an opportunity to hear her works performed by a thoughtful and skilled interpreter.