Emilie Mayer - String Quartets, Vol. 1 (Constanze Quartet)

Information

Composer: Emilie Mayer

• String Quartet in G major
• String Quartet in A major
• String Quartet in E minor

Constanze Quartet

Emeline Pierre Larsen & Riro Motoyoshi, violins

Elen Guloyan, viola

Julia Simma-Ammerer, cello

Date: 2023

Label: CPO
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/emilie-mayer-streichquartette-vol-1/hnum/11166695

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Review

A ‘diary, the story of his soul’, was how Shostakovich’s string quartets were once described, and so often the quartet is where composers turn to explore something personal. Emilie Mayer (1812-83) had eight symphonies to her name but, after finding that her gender hampered her orchestral music gaining public performances, she turned to chamber music. The string quartet offered, perhaps, a place for her to forget the restrictions of 19th-century society.

Whatever the impulse, the result is a joy to discover. Mayer is thought to have written seven quartets, three of which, from the 1850s, appear on this wonderful recording. The Constanze Quartett has done a fine job in showing this music off at its best, with sensitive, handsome playing, beautifully recorded by CPO, a record label that has long championed rare repertoire.

The programme opens with the uplifting G major Quartet, her answer to Beethoven. Mayer, meanwhile, had a soft spot for her A major Quartet, whose ‘appealing melodic character’ was praised by the Neue Berliner Musikzeitung. And it is a thoroughly appealing work, not least thanks to its Adagio which contrasts serenity with bittersweetness. In both works, the Constanze’s sound is warm and well-blended, with plenty of space for individual lines to shine.

Yet it’s the E minor Quartet which reveals Mayer at her most striking. Two versions exist; it’s the second played here. In its handling of motifs and harmonic shifts, it sits alongside Beethoven and Schubert, and the Constanzes treat it as pure drama. Terse and melancholic, it’s a quartet that reveals a powerful creative spirit.

-- Rebecca Franks, BBC Music Magazine

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Emilie Mayer (14 May 1812 – 10 April 1883) was a German composer of Romantic music. Mayer began her serious compositional study relatively late in life. In 1841, she started to study composition with Carl Loewe in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), and in 1847 moved to Berlin to continue her studies with Adolph Bernhard Marx and Wilhelm Wieprecht. Mayer's music was initially influenced by the Vienna classic style, whilst her later works were more Romantic. She was a prolific composer, producing some 8 symphonies and at least 15 concert overtures, plus numerous chamber works and lieder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilie_Mayer

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