Why Did the Great Composers Rewrite Beethoven?

 by Emily E. Hogstad 

Romantic Era composers had a unique relationship with Ludwig van Beethoven. The man and his music cast a massive shadow over the nineteenth century, especially when it came to orchestral music.

Joseph Willibrord Mähler: Ludwig van Beethoven, ca 1804–1805 (Vienna Museum)

The Beethoven works that loomed the largest were his nine symphonies, especially the Third (composed between 1802 and 1804) and the Ninth (composed between 1822 and 1824).

These works were so revolutionary that many composers found it difficult to write orchestral works after them.

Brahms, for instance, knew that any symphony he’d write would inevitably be compared to Beethoven’s. He struggled for over twenty years to write his first symphony. And even after all that effort, he still couldn’t escape Beethoven’s shadow: Brahms’s First quickly earned the nickname “Beethoven’s Tenth.”

Interestingly, one of the surprising ways that composers engaged with Beethoven’s towering legacy was by completely – and creatively – reimagining his works.

Today, we’re looking at three major composers who rewrote the Beethoven symphonies.

Franz Liszt Rewrites the Symphonies for Piano

Carbon print circa 1869 by photographer Franz Hanfstaengl

Franz Liszt was born in 1811 and apparently met Beethoven as a young prodigy shortly before Beethoven died in 1827.

At the beginning of his career as a daredevil virtuoso pianist, Liszt would transcribe the fifth, sixth, and seventh symphonies for piano. Decades later, he would finally complete the set.

These transcriptions have a frenetic brilliance to them that makes for gripping listening.

In the 1960s, Glenn Gould became the first pianist to record the transcripts of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies. Gould described them before a radio broadcast:  

According to a rather touching paragraph in Grove’s Dictionary, these keyboard extravaganzas were intended for his own use in towns which could boast no municipal orchestra, and before audiences which were otherwise without access to the symphonic milestones of Beethoven.

We have no such access problem these days, but Liszt’s transcription is much more than a tremolo-laden silent movie style period piece.

It’s not just remarkable as an archival curio, nor even as a typically Lisztian object lesson in the deployment of pianistic sonority, for even while it maintains an almost puritanical fidelity to the original text, it captures, I think, Liszt’s view of Beethoven, and, by implication, the attitude of the Romantic Age toward the classicist who unleashed romanticism.   

In his pre-performance remarks, Gould verbalised a couple of reasons for Liszt to take on the project: to increase the symphonies’ accessibility in cities without orchestras, and to capture nineteenth-century ideas about the works for future generations.

Wagner Takes on Beethoven

Richard Wagner

Composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) was just a boy when Beethoven died.

He had recently fallen in love with music and was devastated by the loss. He later wrote about meeting Beethoven in his dreams, then awakening in tears.

In 1831, when he was still in his teens, Wagner made a transcription of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for solo piano and voices. (Liszt had circumvented the difficulty of transcribing the choral part in the ninth by adding a second piano to his transcription.)   

Wagner wrote of his attraction to the symphony:

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony became the mystical goal of all my strange thoughts and desires about music… It was considered the ‘non plus ultra’ of all that was fantastic and incomprehensible, and this was quite enough to rouse in me a passionate desire to study this mysterious work.

However, unlike Liszt, Wagner didn’t stop at a piano transcription.

In 1846, when he was working as a music director in Dresden, he mounted a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth. He prepared the local population for the performance by writing articles in the local newspaper.

He also altered the score. He believed that Beethoven wrote particular passages in certain ways because of his deafness or the limitations of earlier, more primitive instruments.

For instance, in bars 53-68 of the Scherzo, Wagner doubled a woodwind passage with brass.

Wagner also addressed the tempos of the symphony, encouraging musicians to discard the metronome markings that Beethoven had left behind, and taking the final two movements at almost half the speed of what Beethoven had indicated in the score.

(For a long time, conventional wisdom suggested that Beethoven’s deafness had made him incapable of judging the effects of the metronome markings, which many interpreters believed were too fast.)

Here’s a performance close to Beethoven’s stated metronome mark, as played by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under Nicholas McGegan:   

And here’s a Wagnerian tempo, as typified by the Vienna Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwängler:  

The difference is stark.

Interestingly, Wagner also moved the chorus from in front of the orchestra to behind it: an arrangement that has been adopted in modern performances today.

Gustav Mahler Takes on Beethoven

Gustav Mahler, 1902

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) agreed with many of Wagner’s interpretive ideas. He was also in a position to put them into action after he became the conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic in 1898.

Mahler decided he wanted to modernise Beethoven’s symphonies to sound better in larger modern concert halls. Accordingly, he set about tinkering with the scores of all of them, save the Fourth.

Conductor Michael Francis, who has conducted a 2024 recording of these versions, says:

Mahler was concerned that in the turn of the 20th century that Beethoven’s classical language had lost some of the power. You think about some of the pieces that Strauss is writing; think of the pieces that Mahler was writing. So these are huge, big pieces, and he wanted Beethoven’s strength to be heard.

In order to create a bigger sound, Mahler doubled the winds and horns and even added a timpani player and tuba player. 

In February 1900, Mahler debuted his new version of Beethoven’s Ninth.

Audiences were scandalised. Purists claimed they were upset because they valued Beethoven’s original score so highly, but the entire hullabaloo was also a convenient outlet for raging Viennese anti-Semitism.

The outcry became so loud that Mahler was forced to write an explanatory note in the press about his choices!

Judge for yourself; here’s the version of the Ninth Symphony that was so controversial.  

In 2024, we published an article looking at his changes to Beethoven’s Third Symphony.

In 2020, we did an interview with conductor Johannes Vogel about what it’s actually like to perform these Mahler adaptations.

And here’s critic Dave Hurwitz sharing his opinions about the Mahler reorchestrations:  

Conclusion

Every composer has to reckon with the shadow of Beethoven.

These three composers – Liszt, Wagner, and Mahler – did so in an especially intriguing way: by rearranging and rewriting his music, all for their own unique reasons.

Liszt wanted to be able to share Beethoven’s works with a wider audience. Wagner wanted to better understand his composer idol and translate Beethoven’s intentions for a new generation. Mahler continued that same mission where Wagner left off.

Whether you appreciate their work or not, it’s undeniable that each of these men made major contributions to Beethoven’s legacy. In the process, they proved the symphonies’ relevance and timelessness.

Elfrida Andrée: The Rebellious First Female Conductor in Sweden

by Emily E. Hogstad

Elfrida Andrée is one of the most remarkable women composers of the nineteenth century.

She campaigned to become the first professional woman organist in Sweden, paving the way for countless women after her.

Elfrida Andrée, 1891

But she didn’t stop there: she also became the country’s first woman conductor, as well as an accomplished composer who loved writing orchestral music.

Today, we’re looking at the life and times of Elfrida Andrée.

Elfrida Andrée’s Family

Elfrida Andrée was born on 19 February 1841. Her hometown was the Swedish city of Visby, on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Latvia.

Her father, Andreas Andrée, trained as a medical man and became a ship’s doctor, traveling to ports in Europe, Africa, and Asia. After he returned to Sweden and settled down, he began pursuing an interest in politics.

He became interested in various ideas that were gaining popularity at the time, such as the labour movement and the women’s movement.

The Musical Andrée Daughters

Elfrida Andrée

In 1836, he and his wife had a daughter named Fredrika. A second daughter, Elfrida, was born five years later.

He and his wife, Lovisa, determined they wanted to raise their daughters with liberal values and educate them. Andreas taught both of them how to play the piano and sing, as well as basic lessons in harmony.

Fredrika proved to be a talented vocalist. In 1851, when she was fifteen, she left the household and traveled to study at the prestigious Leipzig Conservatory.

As for Elfrida, she began to study with two local organists, despite that instrument’s masculine reputation. She also took up the harp, although we don’t know who she studied with.

She performed at the local Musical Society (headed by one of her teachers) and at salon performances given at the Andrée household.

Moving to Stockholm

After Fredrika returned from her studies in 1855, she was hired to sing at the opera in Stockholm. Elfrida joined her, while their parents remained in Visby. Fredrika was nineteen, and Elfrida was fourteen.

While in Stockholm, Elfrida took composition lessons with Niels Wilhelm Gade and Ludvig Norman (who would go on to marry Wilhelmina Norman-Neruda, one of the first great women violinists).

In October 1856, a family friend, organist and composer Gustaf Mankell, submitted a request to the Royal Musical Academy in Stockholm, asking to consider Elfrida for admittance. His request was denied, possibly because of her age.

She studied privately with Mankell until she was finally allowed to take the entrance examination in June 1857.   

Women Organists in Sweden

However, there was a controversy underlying her acceptance: the Swedish government did not allow women to be organists.

Elfrida could earn a degree, but it would be relatively useless without an accompanying job. To maintain an identity as an organ virtuoso necessitated regular access to an organ and a job to go alongside that access.

Unfortunately for Elfrida’s dreams, many countries banned women from playing the organ in church, citing St. Paul’s admonition that women remain quiet during worship.

So after her acceptance to the Conservatory, a sixteen-year-old Elfrida wrote to King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway, matter-of-factly laying the matter out and requesting that the policy be changed:

The fact that it has long been customary abroad, as in England and France, for women to hold the position of organist gives me the courage and hope to make this most humble request to His Royal Majesty.

She didn’t hear back for quite a while.  

Battling with the Government

Elfrida kept studying, and she graduated from the conservatory. But in the spring of 1859, bad news came: a government official had denied her proposal.

One magazine reported:

The government submitted the request to the archbishop, who refused to grant it, mainly because it would constitute a rejection of the order currently in force in the empire, which expressly stipulates that offices and positions should be filled by men who have reached the age of majority. As a result, the government has now also rejected the petitioner.

She continued studying while pondering her next moves. She also began giving piano and organ lessons to help support herself.

In 1859, her parents and younger brother moved to Stockholm. Reunited with Andreas, father and daughter teamed up to try submitting another petition. This one worked.

In March 1861, the Swedish parliament changed the law, opening the profession to unmarried women over the age of twenty-five. (It’s unclear why they granted an age exception to Elfrida, who had just turned 20.)

By May, Elfrida was a professional organist at the Finnish Church in Stockholm: the first in Swedish history.

Telegraph Operator

Elfrida Andrée

Amusingly, at the same time, Elfrida and her father also submitted another envelope-pushing application: for her to become a worker in a telegraph office.

At the time, telegraphy was cutting-edge technology, and women were not allowed to work in the field.

In 1863, her request was approved, but it’s not clear as to what purpose (publicity? activism? or did Elfrida actually seriously consider becoming a telegraphist?). There is no record of her ever working in the field.

Nevertheless, it was an important barrier to break.

Fittingly, around this time she adapted a personal motto: “det kvinnliga släkets höjande”, or “the elevation of womankind.”   

The Gothenburg Cathedral

In 1867, a vacancy for organist opened up at the Gothenburg Cathedral. Her father stepped in, writing to the provost that appointing a woman to the position would signal the city’s open mind and liberal spirit.

Elfrida went to audition on 14 April 1867, the weekend before Easter. Seven men auditioned for the position, too, but the committee unanimously elected her to the post. She became the first professional woman organist in Sweden, and one of the first in Europe.

Her remarkable tenure at the cathedral would last for over sixty years. Her duties in Gothenburg included programming and performing organ music at services, as well as maintaining the organ. In 1907, she also became the choir director.

Concertizing in Germany

Elfrida Andrée

Her fame spread. The Gothenburg Trade Newspaper reported on a November 1867 performance:

Miss Andrée’s performance of her solo part on the organ…justifies the decision that has made her organist at Sweden’s largest church.

However, attitudes were not quite so enlightened outside of Gothenburg.

In 1872, she was set to perform at Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church, where Bach had been music director a few generations ago. But the performance ultimately had to be canceled.

She wrote to her father what the appalled pastor told her:

The board had the same feeling that it was not at all appropriate for a woman to play in a church! She would then be alone on the organ with the whole choir! That is not appropriate at all. We have never heard of a female organist in Germany, and that is not possible here in Germany; it is against German custom.   

Elfrida Andrée’s Compositions

She faced similar resistance when it came to presenting her compositions.

She was deeply attracted by the idea of composing not just chamber music, but large-scale symphonic works. As early as the 1870s, she wrote, “The orchestra, that is my goal!”

She wrote to her sister Fredrika, “If you could conceive of the ideal light in which the orchestra appears to my sight! It is an interpreter of the wondrous surgings of the soul.”

When legendary singer Jenny Lind expressed doubt to her that a woman could write well for orchestra, Elfrida went to the piano and played extracts of her second symphony for her.

Over the course of her career, she wrote an opera, two overtures, a symphonic poem, two organ symphonies, two masses, and two symphonies.

A Disastrous Premiere

In 1869, when she was twenty-eight, her first symphony was premiered by the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.

A nightmare scenario played out. Elfrida wrote later:

The performance was terrible, and I think the musicians deliberately played wrong notes. Fredrika and I left when the Finale started, and the first violins were continually behind the rest of the orchestra one entire measure.

After the debacle, even her own supportive father expressed reservations about her obsession with writing for orchestra. She wrote to him, quite firmly:

The popularity of all these little ladies with their piano fantasies or pretty songs is not what I want to do.

She composed a second symphony in 1879, but had to wait years to have an opportunity to hear it performed.

The bad performance of her first symphony and the lag between composition and premiere of her second help to explain why even the most talented women composers in nineteenth-century Europe found it difficult to write symphonies and get them performed.

Triumph in Germany

Elfrida Andrée at 22

In 1887, she made another tour of Germany. This time, she was allowed to perform at the Marienkirche in Berlin, but she had to pay a hundred marks for the privilege (she did).

She conducted during this appearance, marking the first time that Dresden had ever seen a woman conducting her own works.

The press praised her: it was a “brilliant success for Miss Andrée, who was celebrated with stormy applause and a fanfare from the orchestra.”

Later Works   

Her second symphony – fourteen years old at this point – was finally premiered in 1893. Happily, this performance went off much better, and the audience demanded the finale be encored.

In 1899, she wrote an opera called the Fritiofs Saga with librettist Selma Lagerlöf, who would go on to become the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Fritiofs Saga was inspired by Norse mythology. Tragically, despite Andrée’s high-ranking position in Swedish music, she was never able to see it fully staged. Ever persistent, she adapted the music into an orchestral suite.

Working as a Conductor

She continued exploring an interest in orchestral music: specifically, conducting it, as well as writing it. Although it was relatively common at the time for a woman to solo with professional orchestras, it was still rare for them to conduct an orchestra.

In 1897, when Elfrida was fifty-six, she became the head of the Gothenburg Workers’ Institute Concerts. Her responsibilities included conducting, which made her the first Swedish woman to conduct an orchestra in public.

But she also assisted by helping to organise the concerts, alongside her sister. The ticket prices were kept low, and audiences from all classes were encouraged to attend.

She presented around eight hundred of these concerts, making her an invaluable part of the cultural life of Sweden.   

Later Years and Legacy

In 1904, she returned to Germany for a final time, stopping in Dresden. She set up a performance for organ and orchestra. Again, she had to pay, but the concert was a “brilliant success”, according to the press. It had taken a few decades, but she had finally made her point.

In 1911, Elfrida gave the keynote speech at the International Suffragette Conference in Stockholm.

In her remarks, she declared that it was her aim to “give freedom to the bound…and courage to the frightened.”

She died in Gothenburg in January 1929, shortly before her eighty-eighth birthday.

One account claims that one night, toward the end of her career, she performed on the Gothenberg organ late into the night. After a virtuosic flourish, speaking of St. Paul and his admonition against women making noise in church, she remarked, “Paul, old lad – try that for size!”

The Seven Most Popular Piano Concertos on YouTube

by Emily E. Hogstad

YouTube is full of brilliant piano concerto performances, but a handful have attracted truly massive global audiences.

From Rachmaninoff (lots and lots of Rachmaninoff…) to Mozart to Chopin, here are the seven most viewed piano concerto performances on YouTube, along with our commentary about each, in reverse countdown order.

And not to sound like a YouTube title cliche, but the most popular one might surprise you!

7. Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 by Olga Scheps

Olga Scheps is a German pianist born in 1984, who is especially passionate about the works of Chopin.

This performance of his first piano concerto was recorded in 2014 with the Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio.

Scheps brings an elegant, lyrical touch to this repertoire. Every phrase conjures some new gradation of emotion. She concentrates hard while still being clearly delighted by the music she’s playing, and that combination is irresistible.

The performance’s intimate atmosphere is enhanced by the smaller chamber orchestra.

6. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 by Yunchan Lim 

Yunchan Lim’s winning performance from the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition made him a classical music superstar overnight…and this performance is a major reason why. Even videos just commenting on this video have millions of views!

Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto is notorious for its countless demands, both technical and emotional, but Lim vanquishes all of them with an ease that verges on preternatural.

His poise, control, and intensity are jaw-dropping. (Did we mention he’s only eighteen in this video?)

This performance is a must-listen for any modern piano lover.

The performance went so viral that the Van Cliburn Competition actually posted a second version featuring remastered audio. That one has 4.9 million views of its own. If you combine the two, it would place number four on this list.

5. Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1

Here’s another competition-winning video that went viral: a performance of Chopin’s first piano concerto by Seong-Jin Cho, who won the 2015 Chopin International Piano Competition.

Cho’s interpretation is refined and heartfelt, with a natural elegance that makes even difficult passages seem effortless.

It’s sheer joy to watch him finish the concerto; he looks like he’s in his own little world of musicmaking, and we’ve been lucky enough to get to spy on it.

4. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 by Nobuyuki Tsujii  

The musicality of blind pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii touches audiences deeply.

He learns music by ear, which enables him to learn (and hear) this music in a different way from other performers.

His technical mastery is remarkable, as is his heartbreaking sincerity.

The YouTube heatmap reveals that the most popular part of the performance is the ebullient ending from 30:45 on, where all of the sad loneliness of the first two movements turns into hard-won triumph. It’s mysterious and moving.

3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 by Yeol Eum Son  

This performance is from the final round of the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition, where pianist Yeol Eum Son would go on to win the silver medal.

It’s a lovely performance. Her touch throughout is beautifully measured. Every phrase has something to say, and serves a purpose within the longer musical line.

The concerto’s most famous part is its slow movement, which begins at 15:05. It was used in the movie Elvira Madigan, which has become the concerto’s nickname.

2. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 by Anna Fedorova  

Anna Fedorova’s rendition of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto is the kind of performance that hits a listener squarely in the center of the chest: full-blooded and deeply personal.

Filmed at the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, this video is shot in a way that emphasises the architecture of the hall, as well as the way that the hall’s audience is wrapped tightly around the musicians. It lends a sense of intimacy to both the music-making and the cinematography.

Fedorova’s ability to balance power and restraint makes the concerto especially moving. Listen at 4:20 to how she treats the dreamy ascending and descending passages, then immediately follows those up with a quicksilver fleetness.

1. Cat Concerto from Tom and Jerry by Yannie Tan

66 million views   

Here’s the most-viewed piano concerto video on YouTube. Turns out it’s not actually a piano concerto at all: it’s a version of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, as arranged for the cartoon Tom and Jerry, performed by pianist Yannie Tan.

It’s cute, fun, and completely unexpected. The result is pure piano joy…complete with a cat ear costume.

Conclusion

From Rachmaninoff’s second concerto to Rachmaninoff’s third concerto, from Chopin to Chopin, and from Mozart to a concerto for a cat, all seven of these performances prove how compelling piano concerto videos can be to online audiences.

Which one of these seven is your favourite? And which pianist do you think will be the first to break 100 million views?

Maria Curcio Was One of the Best Piano Teachers Ever. Here’s Why

 by Emily E. Hogstad 

 

Maria Curcio could easily have been one of the most famous pianists of the twentieth century.

So why do only a handful of classical music lovers know her name today? What kept her from the solo career she seems to have been born for?

Today, we’re looking at the remarkable story of Maria Curcio: her astonishing precocity, the story of how she escaped the Nazis, and how she came back from wartime health issues to become one of the most influential piano teachers of all time.   

Maria Curcio’s Childhood

Maria Curcio

Maria Curcio was born in August 1918 near Naples, Italy.

Her father was a wealthy Italian businessman, and her mother was a Jewish Brazilian pianist who studied under a pupil of composer/pianist Ferruccio Busoni.

Maria began taking piano lessons from her mother when she was  three years old.

She started giving public performances that same year, expressing delight at the toys that the appreciative audience handed her.

Curcio’s Unhappy Childhood

Curcio’s parents chose to homeschool her, so she’d have as much time as possible to pursue her musical studies and tour.

She didn’t go to school and didn’t play with other children. As an elderly woman, she described her childhood as “not a happy one.”

When she was seven, she was invited to perform for Mussolini. However, on the day of the performance, she threw a tantrum and hid underneath a tablecloth, refusing to come out. According to legend she claimed he was “ruining our country.”

Studying With Legendary Teachers

Maria Curcio

Despite that scandalous no-show, Italian artists took note of the prodigy.

Composer Ottorino Respighi invited her to perform at his home in Rome, and she studied for a time with composer and pianist Alfredo Casella.

Artur Schnabel

She also worked with pianist and conductor Carlo Zecchi, a student of legendary pianist and pedagogue Artur Schnabel.

Later, after her graduation from the Naples Conservatory at the age of fourteen, she spent a year in Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger, the most influential music teacher of the twentieth century.

Meeting Schnabel

Karl Ulrich Schnabel, 1940’s © schnabelmusicfoundation.org

When she returned to Italy, she played for pianist Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Artur’s son.

Karl knew his father didn’t like working with children, but Curcio was simply so dazzling that he urged his father to hear her play.

So Zecchi took Curcio to Lake Como, where the elder Schnabel was ensconced, teaching a series of masterclasses.

Schnabel was blown away by her, declaring her “one of the greatest talents I have ever met.” He quickly asked her to be his pupil.   

Curcio would also work intensively with Schnabel’s wife, singer Therese Behr, providing accompaniments to her students. This training gave her important insights into vocalists’ approaches to music. She later said that she learned just as much from Behr as she did Schnabel.

Through Schnabel, she met conductor Fritz Busch, who offered to work with her while Schnabel was touring. This invaluable connection enabled her to hear legendary opera and orchestral performances.

“You can’t play Mozart if you don’t know the operas,” she later said in an interview. “Because Mozart was vocal.”

A Promising Career Interrupted by War

In 1939, when Curcio was nineteen, she made her London debut.

Unfortunately for Curcio, 1939 was one of the worst years of the century to launch a European career.

That September, Hitler invaded Poland, sparking World War II. Months later, in the spring of 1940, the Nazis made another push and invaded multiple other European countries, including Holland.

Staying in Amsterdam During the Occupation

Upon the outbreak of war, Schnabel’s Jewish secretary, Peter Diamand, moved back to his home in Amsterdam. Curcio joined him and continued her concert career there.

After the Nazis forbade Jews from playing music in public, she protested by refusing to concertize. “I wouldn’t accept to play in a country where not everybody had equal rights.”

Her parents begged her to return to Italy, even involving the Italian ambassador and consul to convince her. But she was deeply loyal to her colleague, and she wasn’t about to abandon him.

Saving Peter Diamand

Diamand ended up being arrested by the Nazis and interned in a Dutch concentration camp. It was only through Curcio’s intervention and string-pulling that he and his mother were kept from being sent to an extermination camp deeper in Nazi territory.

The Diamands were freed, but were told that they would be prime candidates for re-arrest in the near future. It became clear they had no other option but to go into hiding.

Curcio coordinated the dangerous work of securing food and forged identity papers for them. The trio hid in cramped conditions, suffering extensive physical and mental traumas from their ordeal.

During their time underground, Curcio developed tuberculosis and malnutrition. It would take years of work for her to regain use of her limbs and enough physical strength to play piano at a high level again.

While filming a 1980s documentary, Diamand remarked, “It was typical for Maria. I mean, as I said, there are no compromises, and when it means risking one’s life, she risked her life.”

“Would you say that part of the price she paid was her concert career?” the interviewer asked him.

“Indeed,” Diamand replied. “Indeed. She ruined her health.”

Despite the intensity and desperation of their circumstances, or maybe because of them, Curcio and Diamand fell in love. They married in 1947.

Recovering from the War

After the war, she entered a sanitarium to recover from her tuberculosis infection.

She later told a student that while she was bedbound, she spent a huge amount of time thinking about how to play the piano, working out technical and musical problems in her head.

(During this time, fellow patient, conductor Otto Klemperer, tried flirting with her, but only succeeded in spilling orange juice on her.)

She slowly returned to playing during the 1950s.

Although she had lost a huge amount of strength and time, she had also built up a reserve of inner strength and internal conviction that would serve her well as a teacher.

Making Musical Friends

She also had the benefit of being married to Diamand, who, in 1948, became director of the Holland Festival.

As she recovered, through her husband’s work, she was able to remain connected with the greatest musicians of the era.

During this second phase of her performing career, she worked with stars like Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears, Otto Klemperer, Pierre Monteux, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler also wanted to work with her, but, interestingly, she declined. Although she admired his music-making, she couldn’t justify working with someone whom she felt had legitimised the Nazis.

He sent her a bouquet of roses as a token of his admiration, and she returned the generous gesture by sending him a gift of oranges (a rare treat in late 1940s Europe), but she still refused to make music with him.

In 1963, the year she turned forty-five, she retired from public performance, choosing to focus on teaching instead.

Moving to Britain

In 1965, Peter Diamand was named the director of the Edinburgh International Festival, a position he would hold for thirteen years. The couple moved from Amsterdam to the United Kingdom.

This appointment helped to solidify the family’s connection with Benjamin Britten, who had several of his most important works premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in the 1950s and 1960s.

Curcio often played four-hand piano with him, and the two artists exchanged ideas and inspiration.

Britten helped her get a position teaching at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She also joined the jury of the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition.

Her Teaching Career

Maria Curcio and Simone Dinnerstein

After she settled in Britain, her reputation as a teacher began to grow exponentially.

Many of the most beloved pianists of the last and current centuries visited her studio seeking advice, including:

• Martha Argerich
• Simone Dinnerstein
• Leon Fleisher
• Radu Lupu
• Yevgeny Sudbin
• Inon Barnatan
• Mitsuko Uchida

And those are only a few of many.

Later Life and Death

In 1971, when she was fifty-three, it came out that Diamand had an affair with actress Marlene Dietrich. He and Curcio divorced that year. However, he continued to speak positively of her and agreed to be interviewed for a documentary in the 1980s.

Through the personal turmoil, she continued teaching and redoubling her devotion to her career and her students.

In her eighties, she moved to the coastal city of Porto, Portugal, where she died in 2009. She was ninety years old.

The Legacy of Maria Curcio

Thankfully, before her death, a couple of priceless documentaries were made about her, featuring interviews with her, Diamand, and some of her students.

One BBC Scotland documentary from the 1980s begins with her telling a pupil who is playing the Chopin G-minor Ballade:

The sound that we need on the piano must always not express just notes; it must express feelings.

It must be immediately the transmission between your soul and the soul of the composer, which goes through your ear and your hands, must go immediately to us.

It’s the soul of Chopin which is crying, which is loving.

It’s not the notes.

Composer Emilie Mayer: Was She the Female Beethoven?

by Emily E. Hogstad  

Emilie Mayer, sometimes referred to as the “female Beethoven,” was one of the most prolific composers of her generation.

Emilie Mayer

Mayer’s symphonies, chamber music, and piano works stand as testaments to both her talent and her determination to succeed in a male-dominated world.

Today, we’re looking at her gripping biography and how she made a hugely successful career for herself in her middle age, after enduring unimaginably painful personal loss.

Emilie Mayer’s Family

Emilie Mayer was born Emilie Luise Friderica Mayer on 14 May 1812. She was the third of five children and the eldest daughter.

The Mayers lived in the German town of Friedland, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, roughly seventy kilometers from the Baltic Sea, where her father worked as an apothecary.

Tragedy struck the family a few years after Emilie’s birth, when her mother died. After her mother’s death, Emilie would have been expected to play the role of matriarch within the immediate family.

This may have been one reason why she never married…and one reason why she felt freer to become a composer.

Emilie Mayer’s Early Education

Emilie Mayer

It is believed that Emilie’s education was overseen by private tutors, as the local Latin school only accepted boys.

She began piano lessons at the age of five with a local organist named Carl Heinrich Ernst Driver.

She later wrote modestly, “After a few lessons… I composed variations, dances, little rondos, etc.” Driver was amused by his student’s precocity and helped notate these works for her.

Her father was thrilled by his daughter’s musical talent and supported her studies throughout her childhood.   

Unexpected Tragedy Changes Everything

The defining event of Emilie’s life occurred in 1840, on the twenty-sixth anniversary of her mother’s burial, when her father shot and killed himself.

She dealt with her shock and grief by throwing herself into composing. But tragically, she suffered another major blow a few months later, when her teacher, Driver, also died.

Emilie was fast approaching thirty, without the economic protection a nineteenth-century husband would provide. Suddenly, she had to figure out what to do with the rest of her life, and how to make a living – and fast.

She decided to devote herself to music. Fortunately, her brothers supported the decision.

Moving to Szczecin

After her father’s affairs were settled, she moved to the city of Stettin (now known as Szczecin, Poland) where her younger sister and brother-in-law had moved after their marriage.

Women were barred from formally studying composition at most institutions of higher learning. The only option for most women who were interested in composing was private study with a tutor.

Carl Loewe

So she began taking private lessons from composer and conductor Carl Loewe, whose nickname was the “Schubert of North Germany.”

He was astonished by her natural ability, claiming that “such a God-given talent as hers had not been bestowed upon any other person he knew.”

He also famously commented: “You actually know nothing and everything at the same time! I shall be the gardener who grows your talent from a bud to a beautiful flower.”

The wording may have been patronising, but his heart was in the right place, as evidenced by the support and encouragement he gave her over the following years.   

Studying with Loewe

During her apprenticeship with Loewe, she wrote her first two symphonies (No. 1 in C-minor and No. 2 in E-minor).

Emilie Mayer’s Symphony No. 1   

Because of his support and the support of the local music directors, Mayer had the opportunity to hear her orchestral works performed: an unusual opportunity for a woman composer of the era.

She incorporated what she learned into her next compositions for large ensembles.

She also began performing her chamber music at more and more private concerts and salons.

But there was only so much she could accomplish in Szczecin, and she became curious how far she could go if she relocated to a bigger city.

In 1847, on Loewe’s advice, she moved to Berlin – this time by herself, without any family.

Studying in Berlin

Adolf Bernard Marx

In Berlin, Emilie began studying fugue and double counterpoint with theorist and musicologist Adolf Bernard Marx.

Marx was a one-time friend of Felix Mendelssohn who had since feuded with him (and, in a fit of typically dramatic Romantic Era pique, destroyed their correspondence by throwing it into a river).

She also studied instrumentation with pioneering military bandmaster Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht.

Reviews of her scores soon began appearing in local music journals. At first, she submitted them under the name E. Mayer, where they were widely praised.

However, as soon as it became known that she was Emilie Mayer and not, say, Edward Mayer, reviewers’ attitudes grew more critical.  

Publishing Her Music

Around this time, she set her mind on publishing her works.

To publish music in 1847 Berlin was a provocative step for a woman to take. Many women composers opted to keep their works private. To many, a woman publishing was seen as unseemly and immodest…as well as an implicit criticism of male relatives’ abilities to provide economically.

To grant perspective to Emilie’s decision, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s family – also based in Berlin at the time – were notably cool on the idea of her publishing her works.

In 1846, the year before Mayer arrived in town, Hensel had gone against her family’s wishes and overseen the publication of a few of her hundreds of works.

In August 1846, Hensel wrote to a friend about pursuing publication:

I can truthfully say that I let it happen more than made it happen, and it is this in particular which cheers me… If [the publishers] want more from me, it should act as a stimulus to achieve. If the matter comes to an end, then I also won’t grieve, for I’m not ambitious.

Mayer, however, was ambitious. She was determined to “[make] it happen”…which it soon did.

Organising a Concert

Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, 1847

In the spring of 1850, Emilie began organising a concert consisting solely of her own works. The date was set for 21 April 1850.

The professional connections she’d been making paid off. Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, subsidised the costs of the performance and made free tickets available to the hand-picked audience.

The program ultimately included an overture, two symphonies, and her setting of Psalm 118 for chorus and orchestra, as well as chamber works including a string quartet and some works for solo piano.

Her teacher Wilhelm Wieprecht conducted.

Soon after, Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria, the Queen of Prussia, awarded her a gold medal of art.

The audience came away impressed. Famous critic Ludwig Rellstab wrote that her themes “flow smoothly through the securely defined realm of tonal colours, often with surprising elegance.”

A Blossoming Career

Over the following months, she would continue to organise concerts of her music. As a result, her output as a whole became increasingly acclaimed.

Her dramatic B-minor symphony, dating from 1851, with its bold Beethovenian gestures, became especially popular.

Emilie Mayer’s Symphony No. 4   

Loewe wrote of his student’s work, “The minor symphony by Miss Emilie Mayer is, in my deepest conviction, in any case an important and ingenious work of art with which the talented artist has enriched musical literature.”

Remarkably, Emilie would write a symphony annually during her time in Berlin, on top of her other compositions.

An International Career

Her productivity and self-promotion paid off. Soon her works were being performed in cities across Europe.

She traveled to Cologne, Munich, Leipzig, Halle, Brussels, Strasbourg, Dessau, and Lyon to oversee various performances.

She also became an honorary member of the Philharmonic Society in Munich, and, back home, started co-chairing the Berlin Opera Academy.

In 1856, she was invited by Archduchess Sophie, the mother of Emperor Franz Josef I, to perform her chamber music in Vienna, which she did. She was accompanied to Vienna by her brothers.

Lisztian Praise

Franz Liszt

Ever scrappy and resourceful, she kept up the momentum by writing to Franz Liszt, the most famous musical celebrity of his day, asking if he would be interested in transcribing her D-minor String Quintet for piano. (Savvily, she had dedicated the piece to him.)

Emilie Mayer: String Quintet in D major (a similar work)   

He turned her down because he didn’t want to transcribe a string quintet for piano, but he praised the work:

I received your excellent quintet in D minor, which you are so kind to dedicate to me, only when I returned to Weimar these days, and therefore I would like to apologise for the delay in my sincere thanks to you.

Reading this work has given me a lot of interest – and I hope to hear even more[…]

The impossibility of reproducing orchestral works and especially string quartets with their indispensable sound and color on the dry piano has been with me for a long time of all arrangements – Attempts averted.

So do not misinterpret it, dear composer, when I [decline] your kindly wish, to transfer your quintets for the piano forte…

Returning to Szczecin and Her Roots

In 1861, at the age of forty-nine, she moved back to Szczecin.

We don’t know exactly why, but it may have been to be closer to her family, or possibly due to health reasons. In any case, she moved in with her brother and his family.

She still composed, but, having written eight symphonies, turned her attention to mastering chamber music.

Historians are still assembling her output, but it appears that she wrote at least…

• Seven violin sonatas
• Eleven cello sonatas
• Eight piano trios
• Two piano quartets
• Seven string quartets
• Two string quintets
• Eight symphonies
• Seven overtures
• One piano concerto
• One unfinished Singspiel opera, Die Fischerin

Some scores were lost in World War II when libraries were bombed.

However, the scores to many of these works (some of them still handwritten) are available on IMSLP for free here.

Return to Berlin and Later Life

In 1876, Mayer moved back to Berlin. As her comeback piece, she wrote and presented her Faust overture, inspired by Goethe.

The work was a major success and marked two decades of triumph in the music industry.   

Emilie Mayer died in Berlin on 10 April 1883 from pneumonia, a few weeks before her seventy-first birthday. She was buried at the Holy Trinity Church near Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and her brother Felix.

She died unmarried. Without a husband or children to carry on her legacy, many of her works fell into obscurity, despite their high quality and popularity.

Emilie Mayer’s grave

With the increased interest in women composers nowadays, more and more modern people are discovering her works. A series of wonderful recordings have been produced over the past few years. Hopefully, we will see her music on programs more and more in the seasons to come.

For further reading on Mayer, here is a link to “The Lieder of Emilie Mayer”, a research paper by Stephanie Sadownik.