The third and final volume of Sarah Cahill’s ‘The Future is Female’ offers a chronologically wide-ranging selection of music composed by women. The intrepid San Francisco Bay area pianist champions female composers in both her live performances and recordings. Notwithstanding a reputation as an avant-garde specialist, she moves comfortably in this series from the present day back to the 18th century, underscoring her dedication to ‘a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire’ with respect to gender. Her project features works by women from around the globe, several of them commissioned by Cahill.

She performs the older compositions with similar acuity, finesse and conviction. The proto-Mendelssohnian Sonata No 9 by Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836) – a French contemporary of Beethoven who had the distinction of being the first professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire when it opened in 1795 – ripples with fluency and harmonic sensitivity. In Cécile Chaminade’s attractive Thème varié (1895), Cahill delivers the elaborate figurations and thick chordal writing with impressive control.

One highlight of the album is the Scherzo (1934) by Grażyna Bacewicz, arguably the most gifted female composer of her time. Written in a neoclassical style, after her studies with Nadia Boulanger, it is dispatched playfully, the pianist savouring the crisp dissonances while maintaining a firm pulse.

The contemporary works span a diversity of styles, from the insouciance and tonal charm of the four Piano Poems by Regina Harris Baiocchi (b1956) to the hypnotic tracery of Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (b1947), whose prepared piano evokes the timbres of a dulcimer. Still more engrossing is the Albumblatt of Aida Shirazi (b1987), which deploys a variety of outré techniques including scratching, strumming and muting the strings to fashion a glittering sonic canvas.