Joan Tower described her second Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman as a tribute to women who are adventurous and take risks. Its inclusion in this concert marking International Women’s Day, with Valentina Peleggi conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, was emblematic. Aaron Copland, whose Fanfare for the Common Man was Tower’s point of reference, couldn’t have done it better. Brass trumpeted the message, percussion gently hammered it home.

This year is the bicentenary of the birth of Clara Schumann, a woman too often regarded as a secondary character in the histories of her husband, Robert, and their friend Johannes Brahms. Clara was 14 when she began composing her Piano Concerto in A minor, and just 16 when she herself was soloist in the first performance, conducted by Mendelssohn. The work is testimony to her virtuosity. Mariam Batsashvili’s playing was similarly accomplished, her duet with principal cellist Alice Neary in the central nocturne a touching pre-echo of Brahms’s later coupling of these instruments in his second piano concerto.

Any notion that female composers of the past wrote on a lesser scale was dispelled by the evening’s two large-scale symphonic works. Augusta Holmès’ symphonic poem Roland Furieux – dating from 1876, but receiving its world premiere here – is indulgent in a richly romantic way; Peleggi indulged it further, while yet retaining an essential discipline. African American Florence Price was the last of the unsung heroines. Her third symphony in C minor, lyrical and gritty, had resonances of Dvořák and Gershwin. Yet, while Price’s most deliberate reflection of her cultural heritage came in the exuberantly stomping Juba, it was the spirit of a defiant woman that ultimately shone through.• On BBC Sounds until 7 April.