It consisted of women musicians and premiered works by then relatively untried American composers, such as Paul Creston, Samuel Barber and David Diamond, that are now widely played and celebrated.

[10][11] Growing up, Frédérique ("Riki" to family and friends) and her siblings, had, according to her brother Jan's 1957 memoir, a very formal father, in manner and dress, old enough to be their "grandfather" and two "simultaneous mothers" : Séraphine, who attended to their artistic development, and her closest friend since childhood, Jeanne Françoise Schenck, whom they called Godel (Bavarian German for godmother).

Also later, with the advent of World War I, most of the Mayers' Belgian friends were no longer willing to be on good terms with an expatriate German, and turned their backs on him and his family.

[17][18] In 1931, she married journalist, Peter Petrides,[b] who wholeheartedly supported her career, and encouraged her to found the Orchestrette Classique, in 1933, of which he became manager and publicist.

Under Madame Petrides's direction, the programming was notable in combining performances of little-known works by the classical masters with premieres of pieces by then relatively unknown American composers like Samuel Barber and Paul Creston, and the British Ralph Vaughan Williams, that have since entered the musical canon.

The Orchestrette of New York was made up of extraordinary women instrumentalists, and, because the Second World War's draft caused vacancies, they were suddenly offered positions in the major symphony orchestras.

[24] She also established the Student Symphony Society of New York City, which she conducted for eleven seasons, beginning in 1950, whose members, age nine to nineteen, were selected for their talent.

[25] Petrides's accomplishments were reviewed by leading critics and writers such as Virgil Thomson,[26] H. Howard Taubman, Irving Kolodin, Olin Downes, Robert A. Simon, Jerome D. Bohm, Francis D. Perkins, Theodore Strongin, Raymond Ericson, Harold C. Schonberg and Robert Sherman[27] who, in the New York Times of July 3, 1970, describes Petrides as "a prime mover in New York's cultural affairs since the mid-thirties".