Topics

As part of the Peter Cornelius festival in Mainz, Germany, to celebrate the bicentenary of the composer's birth (and 150 years since his death), there will be an exhibition about him, and also an international conference about opera in Germany in the mid 19th century. Details here. To round off the conference, there will be a performance of Cornelius's opera "Gunlöd" on 25 May.

Carl Amand Mangold's opera "Gudrun" will be performed in a semi-staged production in Darmstadt on 26 May 2024, for the first time in 175 years.

The Aalto Musiktheater in Essen, Germany is showing the first staged production of "Fausto" by Louise Bertin since its premiere in Paris in 1831.

There appears to be just this short trailer on Youtube.

A quick search has come up with three German reviews, all positive:

Die Deutsche Bühne

Concerti

Der Opernfreund

 

Tomorrow, Thursday, 7 March 20.03-22.00 CET on German radio Deutschlandfunk Kultur:
A recording from 16 February in Dublin
Ina Boyle – The Magic Harp
Stanford – Second Piano Concerto
Dvorak – Fifth Symphony

Finghin Collins, piano
The National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland

One of the students of Bruckner on this new Gramola 2CD set, Paul Caro, has been discussed elsewhere on this forum but I wonder if anyone has any comments to make about the works by other composers in this set, e.g. the two other Piano Trios, by Mathilde Kralik von Meyrswalden and Franz Marschner. https://www.gramola.at/products/9003643992955

Over the past couple of weeks I sometimes got the error message below when I clicked on 'Unread Posts' or tried to post something myself. Could it be a login problem, and has anyone else come across this message? It has become more frequent recently.

Not Acceptable!

An appropriate representation of the requested resource could not be found on this server. This error was generated by Mod_Security.

Julius Bürger [anglicised to Burger] (1897-1995) grew up in Vienna and studied composition with Franz Schreker. He is one of many composers forced into exile by the rise of Nazism. In the very last years of his long life, he saw the fulfilment of a long held wish: to experience his music being performed. Baritone Ryan Hugh Ross brought out an album recently: A Journey into Exile – The Lieder of Julius Burger. There is a half-hour documentary about the making of that album on the Rediscovered Beauty website and also a biographical article.

Emil Robert-Hansen was a Danish cellist and composer who wrote two symphonies, concertos for cello and for piano,  chamber music and also stage works, according to his Wikipedia entry.
A performance of his 1910 Trio for Flute, Violin and Cello in 3 movements is on Youtube (link to first movement).

Bertrand Roth was a Swiss pianist and composer. He lived in Germany from childhood, first in Plauen, then in Leipzig as a student, and then in Dresden for 45 years. He was a pupil of Liszt, who recommended him to Raff, and the latter engaged him as a teacher at the Hoch Conservatory. After Raff's death Roth became one of the founders and co-directors of the new Raff Conservatory in 1882. In 1900, he had a concert hall built as an annexe to his villa in Dresden. This could seat over 100 people. He  organised regular concerts and especially promoted performances  of works by new composers. By the time the 'Musik-Saal Bertrand Roth' closed its doors for good in 1930, 280 performances with works by 250 composers had been held there.

As a composer Roth started late, when he was already around 40. He wrote mostly lieder and piano music. In 1998, the Swiss pianist Fritz Ruch issued a CD with piano works for the Swiss Pan label. This has long been deleted but a copy is currently available on ebay. A biography of Roth also by Fritz Ruch and also published in 1998 makes for fascinating reading. The appendix contains the names of all those composers who had works performed in Roth's salon. Top of the list by number of performance are names such as Reinhold Becker (11), Felix Draeseke (14) and Albert Fuchs (5).

In his younger years Carl Schuricht also composed as can be gleaned from this website. Performance dates can be found in this list of concerts.

Here is a long and interesting, IMHO, article about the composer of the first Jedermann music, written for its 1911 première and performed many times afterwards.

The 2023 Boîtes à Pépites advent calendar featured a recording of one of the Contes d'Hoffmann [Tales of Hoffmann] by this French pianist, organist, composer and journalist. The pianist, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, makes a very convincing case for this work if this particular 'conte' is anything to go by. Neuburger played the entire work last August at the Husum Piano Rarities Festival and will play it again in Paris on 3 June this year. It is to be hoped that there will be a recording of this substantial work with a duration of around 75 minutes.

According to a letter by Juliette Dillon that was quoted in the cultural journal Vert-vert in August 1854, she originally composed the Contes for large orchestra. Most likely this orchestral version was never published and must be considered lost.

Here's a translation of what the Bru Zane website says about her and this work:

Despite her short life, the career of Juliette Godillon, aka Dillon, (1823-1854) turned out to be quite exceptional. Born in Orléans, she learned to play the piano from her mother, a music teacher. From the age of 9 to 11, she was entrusted to the care of organist Marius Gueit (1808-1864), who taught her harmony. Showing real talent, the young girl was taken to Saint-Germain-en-Laye at the age of 14, in the hope that by moving closer to the capital she would be able to exploit her talents in concert. But it was in Meaux that she managed to carve out a place for herself. In 1844, she took up the organ loft at the cathedral and was heard there in the salons. Her conquest of Paris included composing and publishing ten pieces inspired by Hoffmann's Contes fantastiques. Between the first and second collections of this work (1848), a typographical change appeared in her name: Juliette Godillon became Juliette G. Dillon, the surname the composer adopted from then on when performing in public. In the early 1850s, she impressed audiences at her Paris concerts with her talent for improvisation. At the same time, she was active as a journalist, first as the editor of a feuilleton in Le Moniteur parisien (1851), then as the creator and main editor of two titles: L'Avenir musical (1852) and Le Progrès musical (1853). She died suddenly of an illness at the age of 30, without having had time to publish all her works, leaving us with the regret of not being able to know her scherzo La Fête des sorcières or a piece entitled Homère.

Hoffmann's Contes fantastiques, adapted for piano, were published in Paris by Edmond Mayaud in 1847 and 1848 in two editions of five pieces. At the time, the composer had been organist at Meaux Cathedral for four years, and she was counting on their success to gain her due recognition in the musical world of the capital. This appeal did not go unanswered: she performed her Contes on 17 March 1853 in the concert hall of the Bazar Bonne-Nouvelle. Adolphe Adam judged that "few piano pieces offer such real and varied interest" (L'Assemblée nationale, 28 March). Jules Lecomte, in Le Siècle, found that "the very idea [of the work] denotes a power of will and a boldness of inspiration that are both pleasing and astonishing" (30 March). Unlike the great pianists of the time, Dillon only occasionally ventured into the realm of demonstrative virtuosity. She apologises for this in the preface to her score: 'I have only accepted the traits and difficulties, which performers are so quick to triumph over today, insofar as they seemed to me to be appropriate to complete an effect; I have avoided them in all other cases'. Her aim was to translate into notes certain passages of the news that had been selected, sometimes indicated above the staff by a short note. At a time when Liszt, in his Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), was adapting Petrarch's sonnets for the piano or proposing his reading of Dante, the young woman was also adding a stone to the Romantic edifice, building a bridge between the literary and musical arts.

The French journal 'Pianiste' has this:

3 questions for Jean-Frédéric Neuburger

What is the background to Juliette Dillon's "Contes fantastiques"?

It's a major work, the missing link in French Romantic piano, before Franck, Debussy... It was written between 1850 and 1853, before Liszt's Sonata (1853), before Gounod's Faust. It is linked to the French contemporary music that was to emerge at the end of the 1850s and 1860s. It preceded Bizet's L'Arlésienne, Carmen and Les Pêcheurs de perles. I was immediately bowled over when I discovered Juliette Dillon's scores. It's a remarkable cycle lasting about an hour and fifteen minutes. Ten pieces designed to be linked together, but which can also be played on their own.

What is the background of this composer?

She was an organist at Meaux Cathedral, like many good composers. This places her firmly within a great musical tradition. Schumann was a great organist, as were Mendelssohn, Liszt and all the great French composers of the 19th century: Fauré, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Niedermeyer, Widor, Vierne... with the exception of Berlioz and Gounod.

What are the criteria for judging the value of a work unearthed in this way?

Quite simply, it's the inspiration that emanates from the work. And the workmanship, the technique of the composition. This is a truly accomplished work. The thematic references within each tale are all perfectly in place, the modulations are in the Lisztian, Berliozian tradition. What I liked was the innovative aspect. If I had discovered music written in 1850 that could have been written in 1815, I wouldn't have been interested at all. I'm in favour of this approach, which consists of classifying a work in relation to its period. Here we have a composer who created with the most cutting-edge language and who was inspired by the Tales of Hoffmann. Offenbach later used the same themes.

Swiss composer Louis Niedermeyer has been mentioned just twice here, unless I missed something, the last time was ten years ago.
Turns out there's a Niedermeyer Association with biographical information (in French), some scores and recordings, e.g. of his Chant des Grecs.

Gabrielle Ferrari studied with Théodore Dubois and also received advice from Charles Gounod. She was both a piano virtuoso and a composer, of eight operas and other works. Her greatest success, 'Le Cobzar', drame lyrique en deux actes, was first performed in Paris in 1912 at the Paris Opera, conducted by Henri Rabaud. The digitised score is available here.
In its 2023 Advent Calendar, La Boîte à Pépites presents a portrait of a female composer every day. Gabrielle Ferrari's Tarantelle is the entry for 9th December.





   

The Austrian National Library has a new online exhibition devoted to Overlooked Female Composers, one of whom is Johanna Müller-Hermann.

In the biographical sketch about Rita Strohl that I mentioned in another thread, the name Adrien Barthe is mentioned. Barthe gave her composition lessons every Sunday for six years. Barthe has not been mentioned here before. He left quite a substantial legacy, though, and may be of interest to some here. The Sibley Music Library has this finding aid.
One of the few pieces that can be heard online is the Passacaille for wind quintet, here in the arrangement by Georges Waln.

Back in 2018, the Song of the Lark blog posted on the fascinating life and careers of Emma Steiner (1856-1929), conductor, composer and miner!

The second composer after Charlotte Sohy on the new label La Boîte à Pépites is Rita Strohl. Volume 1 (of three), a double CD with her songs, is is due for release on 27 October: e.g. from Presto Music.

This review by Christopher Weber (Jacques Offenbach Society Newsletter #105) on the website of the Operetta Research Center calls the new double CD of Offenbach's La Princesse de Trébizonde "as complete a version as is possible". The link to the release is at the very end of the review, the whole recording is also on Youtube.

The Swiss label Cascavelle has released a CD with two quintets, one by Gustave Doret (1866-1943) and one by Fritz Bach (1881-1930). More information and sound bites here.
Fritz Bach also wrote a symphony, and this was performed by the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande under Ernest Ansermet in February 1921. I'm not sure if the score has survived but there is a digitised file of the piano reduction available, together with other scores, here.