I must admit that in times when digitisation is developing so fast, and where we have so many legendary recordings of great music, for a long time I didn’t feel the necessity to record an album of my own. The experience of playing live has always been (and still is) irreplaceable. So why make this recording now?

It wasn’t until two years ago, when I came across the inspirational figure of the British composer Ethel Smyth in a book by the German author Volker Hagedorn, that I finally had the strong impulse to record. I was immediately captivated by Smyth’s character – by her music and her beliefs – and I strongly felt the need to revive her music and story. I knew that I could spread knowledge of her music and create a worthwhile musical source only by recording these works.

Living in a male-dominated world in the 19th and 20th centuries, Ethel Smyth could study composition in Leipzig only after a long hunger strike. Although she was recognised by many colleagues, she ultimately could not secure her position as a composer. While fighting to be heard, she found herself engaged in the suffragette movement, demonstrating on the streets and shouting for women’s rights. Being a suffragette, Smyth spent a time in Holloway Prison, where using a toothbrush she conducted while all the women together with her, young and old, sang her composition The March of the Women. This scene, later described by a good friend of Smyth’s, gave me goosebumps and I was immediately inspired by it. This kind of personality – this way of raising one’s voice with and through music – is one that we need more than ever in the world today.

We live in a world that is facing multiple challenges. How can we as artists create open spaces for reflection, where we can understand art as galleries of the present and help to shape a world of humanity, tolerance and democracy? It’s a question that accompanies me in everything I do and is directly connected to, and at the same time the answer to, the most important question for me: why am I a musician?

I believe that music has the power to ask questions, to challenge us to find out what connects us in all our diversity, and to encounter positions which are unlikely to be part of our daily lives. In the end I think music can help to shape a human togetherness. That’s why I make music; that’s why I’m a pianist who is not only active in the traditional context of classical music but also in the field of creating new concert formats that address contemporary topics artistically.

So perhaps it is no wonder that Ethel Smyth – with her fantastic music as well as all her political and social engagement – resonated deeply with me and made me think of ways to raise my own voice. It became clear that Smyth’s music was just the starting point, the inspiration that builds a bridge to the present and to the voices of female composers of the 21st century. I started to research, to look for new works that had not yet been recorded and which have the same spirit of transformation, significantly from composers who live and work in the United Kingdom. There are a lot of great composers worth exploring and it was pure joy to go through so many different kinds of piano scores. This was a process that I wouldn’t want to have missed, and a journey through which I fell in love with the music of four other inspiring women and extraordinary composers.

The first of these new works I fell in love with was Eleanor Alberga’s Cwicseolfor, an old spelling of ‘quicksilver’. This is a strong, expressive piece of music filled with transformative power, representing the changeability of this special metal. To me, it’s a work that symbolises the power we need in order to overcome the challenges we face today: a call for the courage to change, to be active in breaking the silence. This music goes beyond our comfort zone in many ways, exploring limits and finding peace within the turbulence. My sound engineer Andreas Neubronner asked me before the recording session if there was any piece in the programme that was likely to detune the piano, and I showed him the score of Cwicseolfor. He looked at it and replied simply: ‘well, yes, that one should definitely be at the end of our recording’. So this powerful music was the last piece we recorded in the sessions, the final musical call to action of the whole album.

The musical opposite, being more introspective, is Sally Beamish’s Night Dances, an atmospheric piece that takes you through a dream, starting from a calm, almost meditative mood and slowly building up to an explosive outburst – a crazy dance in which nothing holds you back until you suddenly freeze, start to reflect on what has happened and slowly find inner peace again. Could this be a musical metaphor for finding the balance we need? At least that was my association: in a world that is getting faster and more divided in many ways, don’t we sometimes need these intensifications to understand what we want and who we are? I was drawn to the inner reflection that Night Dances inspired, and I enjoy this journey every time and everywhere I play it. The most unusual place was when I performed this piece in an open-air concert in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, surrounded by the sounds of honking cars, street vendor calls and generator noises. Everything merged into one and made the performance unique, the music shaped by all these different contexts and associations.

Errollyn Wallen’s I Wouldn’t Normally Say is a fun piece, a joyful celebration of happiness and positivity – a recap on all the good things we have: love, friendship, joy, laughter and those nights where we danced until morning. I immediately fell in love with the energy and the spirit of this tiny piece and was enthusiastic about Errollyn’s artistic engagement. She isn’t breaking barriers because there are some; she isn’t breaking barriers because there are none. To me, her approach strongly connected with Ethel Smyth and so Errollyn had to be a part of this album.

With these three works by Eleanor Alberga, Sally Beamish and Errollyn Wallen – as well as the two works by Ethel Smyth (Sonata No 2 and Variations on an Original Theme), influenced by Smyth’s German studies and her connections to Brahms and Robert and Clara Schumann, works that hover between tradition and Smyth’s new ideas – I felt that the programme of the album was almost there. But something was missing: a connection to me, personally.

What role do I play here, besides bringing music to life? I realised that the main theme of the album – ‘raising the voice’ – was something very personal that stemmed from my roots as a German-born Chinese woman. It was quite a journey to question my own actions and to reflect on my identity as I was challenged to open a door to vulnerability, unpredictability, beauty and the deeply personal. So, research into music connected with China began. It was a rather short but intense process, and when I felt an inevitable connection to the works by the Chinese-American composer Chen Yi, I knew I had found the missing piece. By including her Variations on ‘Awariguli’ – a wonderful and deeply touching piece in many ways – I began to see how recording music and creating an album can meaningfully contribute to the world around me. With her, the programme was complete.

For me, this programme creates not only an album of exceptional music and exceptional composers, but also a musical call to action, to shape the world we live in together and to foster a more humane community. I’m very grateful to Delphian Records for entrusting me with artistic freedom, for supporting my vision and for allowing me to follow my own reasoning for this project. Now I can’t wait to share this wonderful music with all of you and to quote Ethel Smyth: ‘to become friends with you musically, even if it’s in another time and space’.