Violinist Dawn Wohn paid tribute to nine female composers on her debut album, ‘Perspectives’, in 2019. This second is another example of enlightened advocacy featuring works by four American female composers. As Wohn states in the booklet notes for the new album: ‘In an ideal world, there would be no need to call attention to the race or gender of these composers.’

The composers on ‘Unbounded’ clearly deserve the attention they are belatedly receiving, though Amy Beach’s Violin Sonata in A minor, Op 34, has been recorded numerous times. The piece dates from 1896, a year before the death of Brahms, whose ordered Romanticism can be clearly discerned. Wohn and pianist Emely Phelps give the piece an ardent performance, sweeping the narratives along as they maintain fine clarity of detail.

The disc’s other substantial sonata is by Irene Britton Smith (1907‑99), a Chicago-born musician of African American, Crow and Cherokee descent. Her Violin Sonata (1947) abounds in lyrical and vivacious writing of expert craftsmanship, as does a short piece of poetic beauty, Reminiscence.

Wohn and Phelps give an urgent reading of Dorothy Rudd Moore’s Three Pieces for violin and piano (1967), full of expressive moodiness, while the violinist goes it alone in Jennifer Higdon’s Smoky Mountain Air (2021), a paean to the composer’s youth in eastern Tennessee that reflects the ideal Wohn world where race and gender are irrelevant.