Symphony No. 3 in G minor, Op. 36

The symphony opens with a slow, hushed introduction that quickly gives way to a driving, agitated main theme in G minor, full of sharp rhythmic accents and quick exchanges between strings and winds. The first movement builds through contrasting lyrical passages before returning to its restless opening mood.

The second movement is a songful slow movement, built around a long, expressive melody first given to a solo woodwind and then taken up by the strings, offering a moment of calm after the first movement's drive.

The third movement is a scherzo, a fast, light movement in triple meter, propelled by quick, repeated rhythmic figures that pass rapidly between sections of the orchestra, with a brief, more relaxed middle section before the opening music returns.

The finale returns to G minor with renewed urgency, its themes tossed between strings and winds in rapid dialogue, building through the whole orchestra to a decisive, energetic close that mirrors the drive of the opening movement.

Louise Farrenc was a French pianist, composer, and longtime piano professor at the Paris Conservatoire, one of the few women to hold such a post in the nineteenth century. She wrote three symphonies in the 1840s, at a time when women composers were rarely given the chance to have large orchestral works performed. The Symphony No. 3 in G minor was completed in 1847 and received a performance in Paris that year, but like much of her orchestral music it then fell out of the standard repertoire for over a century. Farrenc was better known during her lifetime for her chamber music and piano works, which earned praise from contemporaries including Robert Schumann. Since the late twentieth century, renewed interest in composers overlooked by the historical canon has brought her symphonies back to concert halls and recordings.