She may not have hit the heights like Marin Alsop (Editorial, 30 August; Letters, 2 and 7 September) but Iris Lemare was, in 1937, the first female conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and during the 1940s and postwar years the Lemare Orchestra brought music and opera to the north of England with soloists such as Joan Hammond and Benno Moiseiwitsch. She continued introducing contemporary works by British composers as she had done in London in the early 1930s when she co-organised the Macnaghten-Lemare concerts and premiered new works, some by women, which were not being heard elsewhere. In her late 80s she started one of the first music groups in York’s University of the Third Age, playing and discussing the music of Vaughan Williams, Britten, Tippett, Holst etc, referring to them by their first names as they were friends or fellow students at the Royal College of Music. In her 90th year she described her career with no regrets; she thought she had done her best by music, but a quarter of a century later perhaps she would wonder why a female conductor is still a rarity.
Joan Stoney
Huntington, North Yorkshire
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