Video streamed event and on demand: Bacewicz, Tailleferre and Mayer

Emilie Mayer was often called the female Beethoven. Her powerful Faust Overture for orchestra was performed by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra along with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 during the spring orchestral festival, Ladies versus Beethoven. But here, we will encounter the chamber music of Emilie Mayer via the expressive, melodically rich String Quartet in G Minor.

French chamber music often has a special nuance, which we will hear in music by Germaine Tailleferre. She was a member of Les Six, a loosely formed group of six composers in France in the 1920s who reacted against Impressionist and late-Romantic music. Her Partita for piano is playful and light, like a kite in the wind, as is her melodically imaginative String Quartet.

The Piano Quintet by Polish Grażyna Bacewicz is denser and more explosive, and she was actually uniquely successful as a female composer already in her lifetime. She graduated with a degree in violin performance and composition from the conservatory in Warsaw and combined composing with her life as a touring soloist. Neoclassical music is rhythmically oriented and striking, and often just as beautiful, with shimmering, magical sounds.