‘Shocking news!’ tweeted Alexandra Dariescu in May. ‘Next week I was supposed to perform the Florence Price Piano Concerto, but hiring the sheet music for a female composer is five times more expensive than the Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini I was coupling it with, so Price is cancelled!’ The Romanian pianist’s tweet was met with an outpouring of similar stories: tales of published editions of music by female composers riddled with errors, of hire costs being ten times more expensive than for works by male counterparts, of full scores not matching up to orchestral parts. While copyright may well be a factor when it comes to the current price of playing Price, Dariescu’s tweet tapped into one of the all-too-real problems facing any performer who wants to broaden their repertoire. Performers need readily available, well edited scores – and they aren’t always easy to find.
This was the issue Timothy Parker-Langston faced in 2020 when he started exploring the music of Fanny
