Minna Keal

Minna Keal, née Mina Nerenstein (22 March 1909 – 14 November 1999) was a British composer. After early compositions as a student, she only returned to composing at the end of her life. At the age of 80, when her music was first performed at the Proms in 1989, she experienced her return to composition as a new chapter in her life: I felt I was coming to the end of my life, but now I feel as if I'm just beginning. I feel as if I'm living my life in reverse. In 1928, she entered the Royal Academy of Music, studying piano with Thomas Knott and composition with William Alwyn.

Keal made a promising start as a composer, with several concerts at the Academy and in the East End at Whitechapel Gallery and the People's Palace. the composer Justin Connolly, having stumbled across some of Keal's youthful music archived at the Royal Academy of Music, encouraged her to start composing again, and she took composition lessons with him. Her String Quartet, Op. 1, was completed in 1978 and first performed in 1989: it shows a new awareness of Bartok and Shostakovich. Marie Fitzpatrick describes it as "a powerful, stormy, dissonantly chromatic work, organized around Golden Sections and making free melodic use of 12–note technique". Later that year she died at her home, Acres Plough, Shootacre Lane in Princes Risborough, predeceased by both her husband and her son.

Recordings A Life in Reverse. String Quintet, Wind Quintet, Symphony, Cantillation. Stephen Bryant (violin), BBC Symphony Orchestra cond. Nicholas Cleobury; Lontano, cond. Odaline de la Martinez; Archaeus String Quartet. LORELT LNT110 Cello Concerto, Ballade. Alexander Baillie (cello), Martina Baillie (piano), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, cond. Martin Brabbins. NMC D0485 La Viola. Ballade in F minor. Hillary Herndon, Wei-Chun Bernadette Lo. MSR Classics MS 1416