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In this Essay series, musicologist Natasha Loges shines the spotlight on five women pianists from across the globe. Each woman faced difference challenges, not only of gender and race, but also social class, sexuality and family responsibilities. Each life unfolded against a tumultuous background of World Wars, the Cultural Revolution and the Vietnam War. These women confronted personal and professional challenges – often controversially – to find creative fulfilment as musicians.

Programme 2: Majoie Hajary

Born in Suriname to descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured labourers from India and China, pianist-composer Majoie Hajary (1921–2017) studied in Amsterdam and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. We focus on how her careful self-construction as an exotic ‘Hindustani’ fed into her controversial success in 1940s Germany. After marrying Roland Garros, nephew of the famous flying pioneer, she abandoned performing but continued to compose music inspired by her multiracial background. Hajary’s biographer Ellen de Vries tells us more about her music as well as extracts of her intriguing, genre-crossing compositions, such as the piano work 'Mera Bap' ('My father' in Hindi), and her recently performed opera La larme d’or (The Golden Tear) about Suriname’s colonial history.