Philharmonisches Orchester Bremerhaven & Marc Niemann - Emilie Mayer: Symphonies Nos. 6 & 3 (2022) [Hi-Res]

The most successful symphonist of the Romantic period
In the overdue rediscovery of Emilie Mayer, hardly any text can do without the predicate "female Beethoven", which had already been bestowed upon her by her contemporaries. On the one hand, this is very honorable, because Mayer is indeed considered the most successful female symphonist of the Romantic period. She did not settle for the "domestic" genres of lied, piano and chamber music, which were at best granted to female composers at the time, but took on the representative symphony. On the other hand, the promotional attribute shows that judgments are still made in gender-specific categories - but fortunately no longer in the 19th century thought patterns that also hindered Emilie Mayer's career. The "Neue Berliner Musikzeitung" still described her as a "rare phenomenon" and "exception" in 1878, because the "production" of orchestral works was ultimately the "domain of the male creative spirit. By then, Emilie Mayer had already presented eight symphonies. And in 1850, almost 30 years earlier, a reviewer in the same paper marveled: "Up to now, a woman's hand has at most conquered a song (. . .). What female forces, forces of the second order, are capable of - that is what Emilie Mayer has achieved and reproduced."

After her death in 1883, the composer, who remained unmarried and childless, quickly fell into oblivion. It was not until 2021 that Marc Niemann and the Bremerhaven Philharmonic Orchestra gave performances of Emilie Mayer's Symphonies Nos. 3 and 6, which are now available as a premiere recording. The 3rd symphony was probably played in a public concert for the first time in 170 years.