[15] Very little new music was being presented at the time and the Orchestrette premiered and played works by David Diamond (Concerto for Chamber Orchestra), commissioned[11] Norman Dello Joio, Aaron Copland (Quiet City), Samuel Barber (Adagio for Strings), New York Premiere[16] Paul Creston (Partita for Flute and Violin with String Orchestra[16] and Concerto for Marimba with Orchestra), concerto commissioned[17] Julia Smith (Episodic Suite), commissioned[18] Ulric Cole (Two Sketches for String Orchestra),[19] Henry Cowell, American Melting Pot, Movement 1 Chorale: (Teutonic-American), world premiere[20][21]Gian Carlo Menotti (Pastorale), Ralph Vaughan Williams, (Flos Campi), US Premiere[22] and others.

"[24] "An added note of interest—when Paul Creston was a young composer and unknown, it was Frédérique Petrides and her orchestra who premiered many of his compositions.

[30] The World Telegram on April 22, 1941, printed, "When Miss Petrides runs short of standard material, she never delves among the sub-standard.

"[15] Because the Orchestrette of New York was an ensemble of outstanding women musicians, with the advent of the Second World War and the draft, many of its instrumentalists were, for the first time, offered positions in the major symphony orchestras, as replacements for their masculine counterparts who were joining the front lines.

[32] From then on, until the end of her career in 1977, Frédérique Petrides conducted mixed orchestras and continued to program little known compositions by classical composers, and premieres of new works.

The only music periodical of its kind, it chronicled and championed the activities of women musicians from ancient Egyptian times to the then present.

[35] In 1981, some forty-eight years after she founded the Orchestrette Classique Madame Petrides said: I kept my orchestra small because I wanted quality musicians—most of the women in the group were studying at the Curtis Institute, and the Juilliard School.