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EMILIE MAYER (1812-1883)
Ewa Kupiec · Yang Tai Klenke Quartett Neubrandenburger Philharmonie · Stefan Malzew · Sebastian Tewinkel
‘Miss E. Mayer is a rare phenomenon. […]here we can see a female composer writing not merely for the pianoforte, but also solving the arduous task of orchestral composition, swarming with thousands of secrets. And how she solves it!’
Neue Berliner Musikzeitung 1878
In the German-speaking area, it was Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel that towered beyond the borders and, at the turn of the 20thcentury, it was Amy Beach in the USA and even more so Ethel Smyth in Great Britain that became icons of the women’s movement in music. Still hardly present is the music by the German Romantic Emilie Mayer. At the age of five, she already received piano lessons, and in the early 1840s none other than Carl Loewe in Stettin was her teacher. We encounter familiar classical form patterns, yet once more the focus is placed on the colourfulness of her music, which constantly holds new phrases and impulses ready and with which she recommends herself as one of the most important female representatives of Central European music in the 19thcentury.
