Overture No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 24

The piece runs about nine minutes without a break, and it follows a shape audiences of the 1830s knew well: a slow, weighty introduction followed by a fast main section.

The opening is dark and deliberate. Full chords from the whole orchestra alternate with quieter answers from the winds, and the music seems to be feeling its way rather than announcing a theme. Listen for the way the harmony keeps sliding sideways, refusing to settle, so that the arrival of the fast music feels like a door opening.

When the Allegro starts, the mood flips to something buoyant and forward leaning. The first main tune is quick and springy, passed around the strings, and a second, more lyrical idea follows in the winds with the strings accompanying underneath. Farrenc had studied the classical models closely, and you can hear it in the tidy proportions: the two ideas are stated, then broken into fragments and pushed through a busier, more restless stretch where the music changes direction often.

The tunes return in their original order, and the coda tightens the tempo and thickens the scoring for a brass-topped finish. The whole piece is scored for a modest classical orchestra, with no soloist and no vocal parts, which is why it sits so often at the top of a program.

Louise Farrenc spent her career in Paris as a pianist, composer, and, from 1842, professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire, the only woman to hold a permanent instrumental chair there in the nineteenth century. She wrote her two concert overtures in 1834, at a point when French orchestral life was dominated by opera and a purely instrumental overture was a statement of ambition. Both were performed in Paris in the following years and drew notice from critics who were surprised to find music of this scale from a woman.

Farrenc went on to write three symphonies and a body of chamber music, then her orchestral works fell out of circulation for well over a century. The revival came late in the twentieth century, driven by new editions and by orchestras looking beyond the standard repertoire. The overtures, short and needing no soloist, have proved the easiest point of entry, and they now open concerts across Europe and the United States.