About the Composer: Henriёtte Bosmans was a prominent Dutch composer, concert pianist, and music critic. She began her music education by studying piano with her mother, Sara Bosman-Benedicts, who was a prominent piano pedagogue at the Amsterdam Conservatory. She then went on to study harmony, theory, and counterpoint in the early 1920s, which laid the groundwork for her future compositions. Her career as a concert pianist began to blossom around the same time, and by the 1930s she was performing regularly with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Many of her compositions during this time were premiered by members of the ensemble, including her Concert Piece for Violin and Orchestra. Composed in June of 1934, Bosmans dedicated the piece to her fiancé, violinist Francis Koene, who was set to give the premiere before he tragically passed away in January of the following year. Louis Zimmerman, Koene's teacher and concertmaster of the Concertgebouw, premiered the piece in his place on October 31st, 1935 with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under the direction of Willem Mengelberg. Bosmans refused to compose for many years after the death of her fiancé, only returning to the art form out of necessity when the Nazi-occupied Dutch government banned her performances due to her half-Jewish ancestry. After the war, Bosmans experienced an artistic Renaissance that resulted in the creation of several song cycles along with a series of public performances. This work was eventually interrupted in 1950, when it was discovered that the stomach pain that plagued Bosmans was actually cancer. She continued to perform and compose until she collapsed and died on July 2nd, 1952 at the age of fifty-six.