MUSIC : A Natural Woman--at Composing

She was the first American woman to write a symphony, and her published compositions exceed 150. Yet the name of Amy Beach--also known as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach--remains unknown except to a handful of music lovers. And even those essentially know her for a handful of songs.

That may change a bit at least locally when Gisele Ben-Dor conducts the Orange County Symphony in Beach’s “Gaelic” Symphony on Saturday at the Don Wash Auditorium in Garden Grove.

Beach, who was born Amy Marcy Cheney in 1867 in New Hampshire, was a precocious child. She taught herself how to read at the age of 3 and began composing at 4. She also could play four-part harmonies accurately by ear at that tender age.

The family moved to Boston in 1875, and after a year of private piano lessons, she taught herself how to orchestrate and to write fugues, translating various treatises, including Berlioz’s monumental work on orchestration, from the French.

Her circle of friends included Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, the musical pedagogue Percy Goetschius and Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a Boston surgeon whom she married when she was 18. He was 42.

After her husband died in 1910, she resumed her concert career and set out to conquer Europe, playing her piano concerto, piano sonata and piano quintet in Hamburg, Leipzig and Berlin. Orchestras in the latter two cities also played her “Gaelic” Symphony.

Conquer she did, receiving critical accolades, for her virtuoso playing and her preeminent compositions--for an American.

But at the outbreak of World War I, she returned to the United States, living in New York until her death in 1944. She became the doyenne of American female composers.

Her “Gaelic” Symphony, based on Irish folk tunes, received its premiere by the Boston Symphony in 1896.

“It’s a masterpiece, a great symphony,” Ben-Dor says. “It is so well crafted and so full of musical ideas.

“I don’t think of it as a ‘woman’s’ piece. I’m not really political about this at all. I am being very candid and spontaneous in my admiration. It’s a piece I absolutely love.”

But “being a woman was a big problem” for Beach, says Ben-Dor, who is music director of the Boston Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra and the Annapolis Symphony. “I’ve read reviews of her music. The amazing thing is that when the music was praised, it was praised to stress that what was good, was good because she was a woman.

“The melodic sections were found acceptable because everyone knows that women have lyric talent. I’m being a little ironic in saying this. But when the music was berated, it also was because she was a woman. If a section wasn’t powerful enough, well, clearly, women don’t have a talent for that.

“It was so biased from every point of view. I wonder if people could really listen to it in any objective way. I’m sure it was this bias that kept her unrecognized.”

What: Gisele Ben-Dor will conduct the Orange County Symphony in Amy Beach’s “Gaelic” Symphony and other works.

When: Saturday, April 25, at 8 p.m.

Where: Don Wash Auditorium, Euclid Street and Stanford Avenue, Garden Grove.

Whereabouts: Garden Grove (22) Freeway to Euclid Street exit. North to Stanford Avenue; turn right. The auditorium will be on your left.

Wherewithal: $10 to $25.

Where to Call: (714) 534-1103.