Philharmonisches Orchester Bremerhaven - Music from the Shadows - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The long overdue rediscovery of Emilie Mayer naturally earns her the near-universal tag of Inchfemale BeethovenInch, which she was called even by her contemporaries. On the one hand that is a great honor, for Mayer is indeed considered the most successful symphonist among the composing women of the Romantic era. She was thus not content with the InchdomesticInch genres of Lieder, piano works and chamber music, which is all that her female colleagues were generally allowed; on the contrary, she designed symphonies on the grand scale. On the other hand, that tag shows that people are still thinking along gender-specific lines - even if they have happily escaped the 19th-century mindset that hampered Emilie Mayer's own career. As late as 1878, the InchNeue Berliner MusikzeitungInch was describing her as a Inchrare phenomenonInch and an InchexceptionInch to the rule that the InchProductionInch of orchestral works was solely the InchDomain of the creative male intellectInch. By that date, Emilie Mayer had already presented eight symphonies. And in 1850, almost 30 years earlier, a critic had exclaimed in the same paper InchHitherto woman's fair hand has mastered the Lied at most (...). What female powers, powers of the second rank, can attain - that is what Emilie Mayer has achieved and reproduced.Inch