Even today, there are those who want to hear the same "female Beethoven" in Emilie Mayer that contemporaries of the Prussian composer believed to recognise in her works. The label of course does not explain the artist's notable successes. She had a classically informed but romantically inspired temperament and was successful in negotiating the balance between both worlds. The blurring of boundaries she creates is not intrusive, but is hidden among other places in her individual treatment of the large orchestra she calls for. This was a very special challenge for the orchestrator Andreas N. Tarkmann when he reconstructed the lost score of the B minor Symphony from the piano reduction for this recording. A highly dramatic panorama that results is a convincing connection to the Symphony in E major written two years later, creating a further journey of discovery through the world of Emilie Mayer.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Born a year before Richard Wagner and dying two months after him, the apothecary's daughter Emilie Mayer from Friedland in Mecklenburg represents a type of composer who clearly moved away from the foundations of the classical masters and into her own orbit. The artist, who has found a home at cpo, composed eight symphonies, several concert overtures, a piano concerto, songs and a plethora of chamber music. The violinist Emeline Pierre Larsen has already released a highly acclaimed first string quartet album with her Constanze Quartet. She is now beginning a complete recording of Mayer's violin sonatas, in which the classical-proto romantic tone of the revered masters once again crumbles without reverting to eclecticism - a strong talent, whose stature is beyond doubt for convincing and championing interpreters.

Classical Music

Emilie Mayer, born in 1812 in Friedland, Mecklenburg, produced an extensive oeuvre in a wide range of musical genres unmatched by any other woman composer of the nineteenth century. Influenced by her studies with Carl Loewe, she mainly occupied herself with works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven and developed a compositional style of her own deliberately following outstanding classical models. In 1850 she organized her first concert exclusively featuring her own compositions at the Berlin Playhouse. She was able to realize what remained a wish dream for most women composers of her generation: highly acclaimed by the critics, she successfully established herself as a composer. Piano chamber music accounts for the largest share of Emilie Mayer’s oeuvre. The main motive of the first theme of her Piano Trio op. 16 functions as the sole thematic figure and pervades the entire development section, while in her op. 13 she more closely adheres to the classical practices of thematic elaboration. The greater formal freedom of the Notturno forming her last composition and op. 48 offers her the opportunity to move far away from classical formal language. In a loosely connected, practically associative sequence she develops a peacefully flowing narrative from the basic theme initially presented in choral style. The narrative explores the theme from constantly new angles of vision and develops it in a strongly expressive manner.

The dramatic and atmospheric suite 'Dhammapada', by Anglo-Indian composer John Mayer, reissued by FHR 40 years after the album was recorded. New hi-resolution transfers and remastering, improve what was already a brilliantly recorded album and features a stellar group, including some of the leading figures of 1970s UK jazz-scene such as Tony Coe and Henry Lowther. 'Dhammapada' has previously been out of print on CD for a number years and currently not available in any format. This release also includes two other works by John Mayer, 'Portraits of Bengal' and 'Tantrik Dances', which were recorded at the 1974 Cheltenham Festival and are published by FHR for the first time. Both works feature Mayer’s characteristic East-West fusion style, giving an excellent complimentary album coupling to 'Dhammapada'.

Classical Music