Dora Pejačević – Complete Symphonic Works

[Wheesht]

A double-cd with Dora Pejačević's Complete Symphonic Works has been released on Audite.

[Ilja]

At a very reasonable 6,50 Euro ex VAT for the download version, too. Only payment through PayPal though, so I'm out.

[Mark Thomas]

I'm out for a different reason: apart from one of the piano nocturnes arranged for orchestra, this duplicates works already available, and in generally good performances too. It's good that Pejačević is getting more recognition, though. Her music is played regularly on BBC Radio 3.

[tc]

Sounds very DEI, except the music is not half as good as Mathilde Kralik's. Nevertheless so DEI that the upcoming release of Heise's 6 string quartets has gone unnoticed.

[Gareth Vaughan]

DEI?

[eschiss1]

Latest misused acronym of the year. DEI (Diversity/Equity/Inclusion), in the United States, is a series of programs which, as explained here, has as a key component prioritizing developing talent from underrepresented groups. In right-wing American political culture it has become a "shorthand" for concerns that minorities (and women, who are in the majority) are being promoted over white men even when undertalented, which is not in the least what DEI is about.

That some of our political culture and its terminology has migrated elsewhere doesn't surprise me (and not always to the right-wing, I know), but part of me wants to apologize for it anyway. At best, like the misuse of phrases like "affirmative action" in an earlier generation, this sort of thing clouds the debate.

As to its applicability to the present moment, undeniably there are quite a number of theme concerts centered around women's music lately, but I think it a mistaken view to suppose that if there weren't, there would be more performances of music by comparably lesser-known male Romantic composers instead- I think the concert space would be taken up by what was there before (in the US, as a general thing, with exceptions, a mix of the very well-known and occasional world-premieres.  The concert I'm going to today is an exception, called "Boulangerie II" for a reason - centered around people who had a connection to Nadia Boulanger; the two concerts in two different series both called Boulangerie I were very good, but I digress.)

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks for the explanation for us east of the Atlntic, Eric, no apology necessary. TC: let's not get into the "DEI" debate, please, but I must say that I find Pejacevic's music to be generally of a pretty high quality, and certainly deserving of being resurrected, irrespective of her gender.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Agreed  Mark. And thanks, Eric, for the explanation of the acronym. Please, let's avoid that debate...

[Wheesht]

@tc:

the music is not half as good as Mathilde Kralik's

– would you like to expand on that statement/claim? I for one would be interested.

[Ilja]

Both women share a similar background (upper-class Habsburg Empire) and a fondness for "larger" genres and forms. From what I've seen they didn't really meet, and Pejacevic was of a younger generation of course, although one wouldn't necessarily know it from listening to both women's music. Kralik appears to be the one who handles genre more freely, and clearly more so as time went on; both the symphony and the concerto are less orthodox than Pejacevic's. I wouldn't say either was necessarily "better" than the other.

Personally, I confess to liking Kralik's orchestral works more than Pejacevic's, but I think the latter's Piano Quartet is an incomparably better and more profound work than the former's Piano Trio (both written when their composers were around 25 years old). Kralik's Nonet in C minor shows real growth though, and far more ability in dealing with instrumental voices. But by then she was in her forties, an age Pejacevic sadly never reached.

[Wheesht]

Thanks, Ilja, for that thorough response. Much more helpful, imho, than the as yet unsubstantiated claim that Pejačević's music is not half as good as Krailk's.

[tc]

Ilja's nuanced and informed reply is appreciated. I encountered her music long ago on CPO and am not tempted to revisit. A few critics detected Rachmaninoff's influences, concurring with my blissfully faded memory. Still others mentioned Strauss', which usually can't mean his youthful symphonies. Kralik, much older and financially secure, was spared of the fin-de-siècle fad.

For those interested, her piano quartet is to be released on an album titled Brahms and contemporaries, farfetchedness notwithstanding.

Let's move on.

[Ilja]

Well, when Brahms snuffed it, Pejacevic was ten eleven years old, so strictly speaking...

I think "A is better than B" discussions rarely yield any significant results, because apart from the blindingly obvious ("Ludwig van Beethoven was more versatile than Lorenzo Perosi") it's usually mostly down to personal aesthetics. As an historian, I'm more concerned with framing artists within the context (and confines) of their time. So you'll never hear a "... but she only composed miniatures" from me when that's what women were supposed/allowed to do. Of course, it does makes integrating female repertory difficult when longer forms are still the norm of the canon.

Pejacevic is obiously a bit of an unfulfilled promise because of her early death, but unlike some other cases where you see composers evolving until the moment of their death (Kalinnikov and Karłowicz spring to mind) I get the impression that musically she's pretty much said what she had to say. That doesn't diminish her legacy, I think; you could arguably say the same thing about Felix Mendelssohn. Kralik was much more of a late bloomer, only really developing her own voice (and her biggest successes, including the opera Blume und Weißblume) from her late forties.