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Beach<\/strong> Amy Beach has earned her place in the history books as America\u2019s first female symphonist, but it\u2019s only in recent decades that her music has started to filter into the performing repertoire. <\/p> Her piano music is a case in point. It\u2019s not that it was unheard in her lifetime. Far from it. <\/p> A professional pianist herself, Beach wrote a good number of works for piano, mostly but not exclusively miniatures, between 1889 and 1937. <\/p> Some were taken up by other leading pianists of the day, the likes of Josef Hofmann and Olga Samaroff. <\/p> Yet after her death in 1944, Beach was ignored for decades. <\/p> In her recent book\u00a0The Piano: A History in 100 pieces<\/em>, the pianist Susan Tomes<\/a> notes that \u2018in years of piano lessons, concert-going and postgraduate seminars I never once heard a piece by Amy Beach\u2019. <\/p> That\u2019s all changing, not least in the recording studio. <\/p> Jennifer Fichet is the latest pianist to take up Beach\u2019s cause, and her beautifully performed, warmly recorded album helps reveal the worth of her music. <\/p> The opening\u00a0Valse Caprice<\/em>, premiered by Beach when she was 22, sparkles in Fichet\u2019s hands, drawing the listener into a programme full of poetry and virtuosity. <\/p> Broadly speaking, her music falls under the umbrella of European romanticism: listen for the echoes of Liszt<\/a> in \u2018Fireflies\u2019 from\u00a0Four<\/em> Sketches<\/em>, the spirit of Chopin<\/a> in the\u00a0Ballade<\/em>\u00a0and impassioned\u00a0Nocturne<\/a><\/em>. <\/p> Fichet\u2019s playing is wonderfully well-rounded, and she\u2019s equally as good distilling the mood in the sparer\u00a0Old Chapel by<\/em> Moonlight<\/em>\u00a0of 1924 and\u00a0A Cradle Song of the Lonely Mother<\/em>\u00a0of 1914 as getting stuck into the technical demands of the substantial, 20-minute\u00a0Variations on a Balkan Theme<\/em>.\u00a0Rebecca Franks<\/em><\/p>