Mitra Kotte
(c) Andrzej Grilc
Dear Mitra, even apart from the thematic focus, the program of this album is literally remarkable.
Yes, I present a century of music history in which female composers and their masterful works are highlighted. With its diversity, this program opens up a new musical world for the audience.
One could say that Paris-born Louise Farrenc had what many of her women composer colleagues of the time lacked: self-assurance and support. Even Robert Schumann praised her in his Neue Zeitschrift für Musik; her husband, the publisher Aristide Farrenc, distributed her works, and in 1842 she became the first woman professor at the Paris Conservatory. A highly successful career! Her self-confidence can also be heard in her Souvenir des Huguenots, namely a set of variations; in this case they are on the Lutheran chorale Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott, which she took from Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Les Huguenots. A virtuoso piece …
Oh yes! Confidence can certainly be heard here! She captivates the audience from the very first bars. One can really showcase a lot of pianistic skills.
Mitra Kotte
Farrenc also shared this energetic, at times exuberant quality with Emilie Mayer. Mayer’s social nonconformity – according to the writer Marie Schilling, she « sometimes showed up without a hat at festive occasions – unthinkable for a lady – and was amused by the horror of those present »- is also reflected in her great penchant for musical experimentation, which earned her the nickname « female Beethoven. » In addition to this rebellious side, she was no stranger to lightness and cheerfulness, as demonstrated by the waltz Tonwellen. Is this piece, with its apparent simplicity, a fitting contrast to Farrenc’s large-scale variations?
Yes, it is precisely this musical variety that I find fascinating in our selection. This waltz is really delightful. There is the cheerful beginning which then leads into a calm middle section, where we once again enter a completely new sphere. With Farrenc, the music surges ahead continuously, never comes to rest, but with Mayer’s Tonwellen there is almost a kind of haven of tranquility.
The following three composers built on the achievements of the generation of Farrenc and Mayer in the second half of the nineteenth century, determined to hold their own upon the hard-won ground. Marie Jaëll, Louise Adolpha Le Beau, and Cécile Chaminade studied at the most renowned conservatories and with the most prestigious private teachers, travelled throughout Europe as piano virtuosos, and appeared confidently in public with their compositions. And even if there could not yet be any talk of real equality, they gradually managed to win the acceptance of their male colleagues. How do you see this generational change musically?
One could say that the selected works of these three composers are somewhat more complex, deeper, and “play less to the gallery” compared to Farrenc and Mayer, and the part writing is also generally somewhat more concentrated. They are still very virtuosic! But also much richer and more concentrated. One of the reasons could definitely be the improved access to musical education that you mentioned. Perhaps the women composers no longer had to prove themselves through virtuosity to the same extent, and were able to sit back and relax while composing. You could say they had the courage to consciously do less.
In the rest of the album as well, we have the opportunity to discover works by true pioneers. Amy Beach’s Symphony in E minor op. 32, completed in 1896, is the first symphony by an American woman. While here she was very much inspired by Antonín Dvořák, the Four Sketches composed four years earlier seem to foreshadow the spirit of French Impressionism. Significantly, she supplied each of the four movements with quotations from French poets. In addition to the common musical language, this is an exciting parallel to Nadia Boulanger’s Vers la vie nouvelle, which she composed during the First World War and in which she also included a poetic motto: « Doubt and despair seeped into the oppressive atmosphere. But distant, clear, pure sounds emerge, and man strides in the direction of hope for a better life, trustingly, tenderly, and earnestly. »
In Vers la vie nouvelle you really feel the musical and programmatic direction – a direction that leads from despair to hope, bar by bar. With the continuous pedal point, which is present throughout the piece, you can feel this pressure which then dissolves in the last bars.
Mitra Kotte
(c) Andrzej Grilc
So it is an almost programmatic setting.
The question is, which came first, the text or the music? In Amy Beach’s Four Sketches one notices that the pieces are very different from each other, but each one is simply wonderful. They remind me a lot of Dvořák. This flirting with the French quotes also seems a bit typically American to me.
Dora Pejačević was also a pioneer in her homeland and is considered the first Croatian woman composer to present orchestral works publicly, such as her magnificent F-sharp minor Symphony. Her ‘Life of Flowers’ cycle is also more than just a colorful bouquet of well-written character pieces, but a veritable cornucopia of musical expression.
Here I find that the title, similar to Vers la vie nouvelle and also Maria Hofer’s Die Maschine, simply creates a perfect image for the music! The Schneeglöckchen (Snowdrops) reminds me of winter, the ‘Rose’ sounds full-bodied and romantic. It is all very colorful…
… and at the same time a fascinating contrast to Die Maschine by Maria Hofer, born in Amstetten in 1894, who as a composer, pianist, and organist was in contact with the most important cultural personalities of the time, from Arnold Schoenberg to Stefan Zweig, and in whose music one can really hear the pulse of modernity. There are also echoes of Debussy and Stravinsky as well as the Second Viennese School. Particularly in connection with the title Die Maschine, with its rather « masculine » connotations at the time, can we perhaps hear a form of artistic emancipation?
As you say, you can really hear a machine with these repetitive rhythms. Formally, it corresponds to a toccata, an old form, but stylistically and programmatically it is of course ultra-modern. One could ask whether this piece is a form of artistic emancipation.
At the end of the program, we have the April Preludes by Vítězslava Kaprálová, who was born in Brno in 1915. An extraordinary composer and one of the first internationally successful female conductors, who composed more than fifty works during her short lifetime – she died at the age of only twenty-five.
The April Preludes really made a strong impression on me! These pieces are also very different from each other, stylistically and in character. With each new section, I wondered: Aha, one can also compose like this, interesting (laughs). The pieces were written exactly one hundred years after Farrenc’s Souvenir des Huguenots …
… and thus build a musical historical bridge to the beginning of the program. How would you summarize the journey of discovery you are embarking on in this album?
It is really important to me to introduce these women composers with their own musical language and sound spectrum, and to showcase each work of art in itself – to present each piece in its own cosmos. It is inconceivable that over such a long period of time, there have been such talented women composers who have created such outstanding works for posterity without being recognized – despite the difficulties they faced.
