“Long after her death, in 1944, Ethel Smyth is finally” getting her due, writes David Allen in Friday’s (8/7) New York Times. “One of numerous female composers of the past now coming to fresh, deserved prominence, Smyth was born in England in 1858 and moved to Leipzig, Germany, at 19, training in the circle around Brahms. She became the first woman to have a work performed by the Metropolitan Opera, in 1903, before she joined the militant wing of British suffragists. When the conductor Thomas Beecham visited her at Holloway Prison in London, where she spent three weeks in 1912 for throwing rocks at a politician’s house, he found inmates singing her anthem, ‘March of the Women.’ … It was an experience that surely fed into Smyth’s The Prison, first performed in 1931.… It has now been recorded for the first time for Chandos, the label which has already released Smyth works including her Mass and Serenade…. James Blachly, who conducts the Experiential Orchestra and Chorus on the recording, spoke over Zoom last month about the music, its importance and his favorite page of the score, which he edited for performance and publication.” The article features edited excerpts from Blachly’s conversation.