Emilie Mayer: Piano Concerto, Overtures – Kölner Akademie & Michael Alexander Willens

In our successful and extensive Emilie Mayer Edition, we now present overtures and a piano concerto by Europe’s greatest composer, who occupies a singular position in the musical world of her time, and indeed, no other composer of her generation allowed herself to be so little impressed by patriarchal gender conceit and rigid role attributions as she! Her Faust Overture was very popular at the time; there is evidence of several performances in the early 1880s. Although it is in sonata form, it is overlaid with unusual dramaturgical aspects related to the subject. Her Piano Concerto in B flat major (as far as is known, Emilie Mayer’s only concertante composition) is a prime example of an individually handled classical approach.

Reviews

Gramophone Magazine December 2023

“The warm period sonorities of the Kölner Akademie – pure-toned strings and downy flutes – help to place Emilie Mayer as a strongly independent contemporary of Mendelssohn and Schumann in this collection of four overtures.

FonoForum 12/2023:

“Tobias Koch realizes the musical esprit as fiery as it is sensitive. The Cologne Academy under its artistic director Michael Alexander Willens is a joy. This is not only tremendously precise and rhythmically energetic playing, colors are sensitively made to shine, motifs, dynamics and musical progressions are balanced with compelling tension and, above all, filled with real passion.”

“The use of historical instruments and playing techniques, her refined use of orchestral timbres in combination with partly conventional harmony, partly deliberately going beyond it, reveals interesting intersections and cross-connections for which Mayer is known, but which are audible here with such clarity as one could only wish for.” (klassik.com)

“This CD charts the path from Mayer’s accomplished writing in the style of early 19th century composers to her later works in which she finds her voice, culminating in the highly satisfying Faust Overture. The Kölner Akademie under Michael Alexander Willens plays magnificently and is visibly excited by the drama of the later works, while Tobias Koch’s playing in concert is as sparkling as ever.” (musicweb-international)