This double CD looks most promising.............https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/sinfonie-4-klavierkonzert/hnum/8717074 (https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/sinfonie-4-klavierkonzert/hnum/8717074)
Oooh, yes. An absolute must-buy!
Ker-ching!
I should say so!
neat! different piano concerto (B-flat rather than C-sharp minor- wasn't aware for some reason that she wrote two) but the symphony could be from the 2012 radio recording we're familiar with (would need to compare the timings).
I wasn't aware she composed another piano concerto other than the B-flat of 1850, a work I already know, and actually find a little disappointing. Imagine a piano concerto composed after the Schumann, Henselt, Liszt (at least prior to the final versions) and Mendelssohn works in the genre that sounds like it could have been written 60 years earlier, and you have the Mayer.
As far as I know she wrote only one piano concerto, in B flat major. Where does the C sharp minor come from. Happy to be enlightened.
my notes need fixing? and so...
otoh the concert notes claim Vladimir Stoupel, not Ewa Kupiec, was the pianist for that piano concerto concert. Perhaps it's another performance (or again my notes are wrong :) )
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/sinfonie-4-klavierkonzert/hnum/8717074
Just noticed this on jpc website.
Thanks, Rob. I have merged your post with this thread started earlier today. We all share your interest in this release!
Quotethe symphony could be from the 2012 radio recording we're familiar with
You're probably correct, Eric. The performers are certainly the same.
I think we've really got to get away from comparing Mayer with Beethoven. The Symphony featured here is music of the next generation, clearly inhabiting the same universe as her contemporaries, i.e. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Farrenc, Rufinatscha, etc.
ohhh ..finally! that's so fantastic..I discovered the symphony on youtube..then I had this site's wonderful download burned on cd..and now a proper commercial release, with a piano concerto to boot!
The more I listen to Mayer's music , the more I am convinced she is really way above the average among the Unsungs..without the need of any gender qualification.
I am very happy....wonders never cease!
Gender qualification?
Women faced a lot of prejudice when trying to be a composer (they still do, though probably less than in the middle of the 19th century). So it is not surprising when those women who were (at least somewhat) successful turn out to be rather better than their male unsung colleagues.
Or that fans are more careful about those whose music they promote. (Alice Mary Smith notwithstanding, imhonesto, whose fans seem to be carelessly insensible to other 19th-century comparisons, but that's a conversation for another time I suppose.)
just to make myself clear; I said "without gender qualification", because I find somewhat irritating that, while discussing Mayer's (or Farrenc's , or Smith's, you name them) you almost often read "female composer".IMHO such qualification belongs to another age, to me they are just "composers" , just like , for example, Marin Alsop (case in point since I am going to a concert tonight) is just a "conductor".
I do not base my assessments on gender.
I didn't understend if the "fan" was referred to me for some reason, if so , it was just genuine enthusiasm for some music I find really worthy, not blind fandom, something alien to me.
the "fan" in question was someone talking on Radio 3 in an official capacity, I think. I don't believe it was you ?!?...
oh ok, thanks Eschiss1, I was afraid I sounded too overexcited.
Quote from: hyperdanny on Tuesday 04 September 2018, 08:23
I do not base my assessments on gender.
Gender matters though. A male composer of Mayer's format would almost certainly have received job offers as a "Kapellmeister" or "Musikdirektor". Mayer never did as far as I have found out. Farrenc neither as far as I know (she was at least professor for piano though--even paid equally--eventually). Amanda Maier stopped composing after getting married to Röntgen, possibly not entirely voluntarily. We will never know how these composers would have developed if they had had equal chances with men.
Nowadays things are not quite that bad but the disadvantage is still there.
Also: Gender is a crucial part of everybody's identity and will influence the output of an artist, even if this is harder to analyze in the case of a musician than of a writer.
Yes, I think we would probably all agree that gender can't be ignored if we want to understand why some of our Unsung Composers have been unsung. At the same time, as hyperdanny says, we should not care about gender when it comes to our response to music and its performance.
Back to Emilie Mayer! :)
Of course, while being thankful for the rediscovery of really fine women composers such as Mayer, Farrenc, etc., we mustn't fall into the trap of over-estimating or over-promoting others just because they're women. As with some of their male counterparts, there will be those who have been justly forgotten...
Certainly. Although one could make the point that because of the prejudicial hurdles with which women were faced, selection was more strict; in other words, women that were able to establish themselves as composers tended to be of a higher average calibre than their male counterparts. A problematic consequence, in my view, is that because of those prejudices women were often more or less forced to restrict themselves to "smaller" forms of composition: songs, chamber music, etc.
You can still be a great composer of songs and chamber music, of course.
I agree heartily. And - as has been said many times on this forum - with some composers the chamber music forms the cream of their output.
Oh, what a relief to turn to some attractive music after the greyness of Rubinstein's Moses! Listening again to the broadcast of Mayer's 4th has me looking forward to the CD release - and appreciating the memorability of her themes and their working-out in the first movement. Wikipedia says this of her style:
Emilie Mayer was initially influenced by the Vienna classic style, whilst her later works were more Romantic.
Mayer's harmonies are characterised by sudden shifts in tonality and the frequent use of seventh chords, with the diminished seventh allowing Mayer to reach a variety of resolutions. One defining characteristic of Mayer's music is a tendency to set up a tonal centre with a dominant seventh, but not resolving to the tonic immediately; sometimes, resolution is skipped altogether.
Her rhythms are often very complex, with several layers interacting at once.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilie_Mayer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilie_Mayer)
Quote from: Alan Howe on Friday 07 September 2018, 16:16
You can still be a great composer of songs and chamber music, of course.
Certainly! If only Smetana (to name one example) would have stuck to composing chamber pieces...
What? No Bartered Bride? No Vltava? Heresy!
... and back to Emilie Mayer...... ;D
what a fantastic release: since I got it a few days ago I listened to it a few times.
In particular I find the symphony totally addictive, to me this work has more than a few moments of genuine greatness..so sad that so much of Mayer's output seems to be lost.
Also, conductor's Malzew reconstruction work strikes me as totally idiomatic: this is indeed the same soundworld of the other wonderful symphony released on disc.
The concerto is a little gem , too.
All this said, I finnd disappointing that the darkly gorgeous Faust overture found on YT with same ensemple and coductor isn't included..let's just hope they're keeping it in the can to pair it with something else in a future release.
I agree about the stature of Mayer's 4th Symphony (as reconstructed by Stefan Malzew). It's a magnificent piece - quite the equal, I'd've thought, of any symphony by, say, Mendelssohn or Schumann. It's memorable, beautifully worked out, inventive and exciting.
So: why shouldn't such a work be admitted to the standard repertoire? Well, we all know the answer(s) - the ones the movers and shakers give, that is. Oh, yes: here comes yet another set of Schumann symphonies played by the Toytown Chamber Philharmonic. Just what we've always wanted - one more pointless, anaemic-sounding cycle of an over-recorded corner of the symphonic repertoire. And yet here's Mayer 4: every bit as good. Maybe better. Especially for the jaded palate...
Even so, if Mayer 4 (B minor) and 7 (F minor) are recorded over and over at the expense of her other surviving symphonies, ...
(and even Schumann's original symphony no.4, and his Zwickau, and Mendelssohn's Italian symphony in its 1834 revision - especially the latter - haven't been totally over-recorded, though I sympathize very much, yes. Many recording executives complaining about the death of classical music aren't however likely to find selling another version of Schumann - may not sell well - selling unsung music - sells to niche/boutique/... submarket of niche submarket - more than a Hobson's choice (and Ian Hobson doesn't seem interested). So- I don't know (and I'm part of that sub-sub-niche-market- when I can afford to buy stuff at all.))
Well, I'd certainly like to hear what, say, Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic might make of her symphonies. One can dream...
BTW while a quick Google search reveals no upcoming performances, it suggests that there were some very positive mentions of her (here (https://books.google.com/books?id=AEBFAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA442) in a 1909 article in The Etude for example, and another in a list of Faust-based compositions accompanying a performance of a Faust overture by someone else by the Boston symphony orchestra- suggesting incidentally that while she has been mostly forgotten, there was a time after her death when people did remember her work and its quality. I wonder if it was performed then too (more than once a decade)?