Various Composers - Trouvez les femmes! Vol. 2 (Miriam Terragni; Catherine Sarasin)

Information

• Amy Beach - Sonate in A Minor, Op. 34
• Amanda Maier - Sonate in B Minor

Miriam Terragni, flute

Catherine Sarasin, piano

Date: 2023

Label: Coviello Classics

https://covielloclassics.de/Katalog/cov-92209-trouvez-les-femmes-vol-2/

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Review

The Swiss duo Miriam Terragni (flute) and Catherine Sarasin (piano), play arrangements of violin sonatas by Amy Beach (1867-1944) and Amanda Maier-Röntgen (1853-1894). This is no walk in the park for either performer, as they are technically as well as creatively demanding.

The album opens with the four-movement Violin Sonata by Amy Beach, written in 1897. The first movement is full of contrasts between quiet and passionate passages, which the duo plays almost ecstatically. Terragni and Sarasin are not interested in euphony but in maximum expressiveness, and they sharpen the contrasts accordingly. The second movement becomes quite mischievous here and only in the following Largo con dolore does the duo show Beach from their romantic side. The concluding Allegro con fuoco is passionate and urgent.

The sonata is imbued with a strong sense of romance and passion, and in this it is not inferior to the sonata by Swedish violinist and composer Amanda Maier-Röntgen (1853-1894). She composed it in Leipzig in 1873 and performed it frequently with her later husband Julius Röntgen.

Miriam Terragni and Catherine Sarasin play the sonata passionately, with the first movement very perky. In the Allegretto, the middle section of the second movement, Andantino, and in the final Allegro molto vivace, there is even very animated and gestural-rhetorical music-making.

-- Norbert Tischer, Pizzicato

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Amy Beach (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Beach

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Amanda Maier (20 February 1853 – 15 July 1894) was a Swedish violinist and composer. She was the first female graduate in music direction from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 1872. Maier continued to study composition in Leipzig, where she met German-Dutch pianist and composer Julius Röntgen, her future husband. The couple married in 1880, a marriage that ended Amanda's public appearances, but she continued composing, and the couple arranged musical salons and performances in Europe. In 1887 Maier became ill with tuberculosis. Her final major composition was the piano quartet (1891).

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

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The Swiss flutist Miriam Terragni studied at the Musikhochschule Basel and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. She is currently principal flutist of the Argovia Philharmonic under the direction of Douglas Bostock. Her work as a solo flutist was influenced by her work with the Orchester Philharmonique Suisse under well-known conductors such as Mario Venzago, Charles Dutoit, Gerd Albrecht and Nello Santi, among others. In addition to her active work in orchestras and as a passionate chamber musician, she teaches at the Laufen, Allschwil, Staufen, Hitzkirch and Reinach music schools.

https://www.terragni.ch/

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The Swiss pianist Catherine Sarasin was educated at the Musikhochschulen Basel and Lucerne, where she was influenced the most by the English pianist Hubert Harry. Her interest in lied accompaniment allowed her to continue her studies in the master class for lieder interpretation with Irwin Gage at the Musikhochschule Zürich. She also dealt intensively with the historically informed performance practice at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. As a soloist and chamber music partner, Sarasin gives guest performances all over Europe. Various radio and TV productions as well as CDs document her work.

https://www.catherinesarasin.com/en/

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