Piano Miniatures vol.1 Dora Pejacevic / Arr. Ida Gamulin

Minijature za glasovir
Klavierminiaturen
Gamulin, Ida, ed

Dora Pejacevic (1885 1923) is one of the most talentet female composers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. She studied at the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb then briefly in Dresden with Sherwood and in Munich with Courvoisier. For the most part, however, she was self-taught and developed her musical talents through contact with other artists and intellectuals, such as Karl Kraus. Her ancestral home was at Naice (near Osijek), but she also travelled extensively to Budapest, Munich, Prague and Vienna. After 1921 she lived mainly in Munich. Her works were performed most frequently outside Croatia; part of her Symphony, for example, was first given in Vienna (25 January 1918) and the complete work was performed later in Dresden. Her late Romantic idiom, enriched with Impressionist harmonies and lush orchestral colours, evolved as she strove to break free from drawing-room mannerisms and conventions... The artistic heritage of Dora Pejacevic covers 57 works, twenty-four of which were composed for piano. With the exception of two sonatas, all the other compositions are miniatures, a privileged form of late Romanticism, and one in which this composer expressed herself most freely. She produced them throughout her life as a composer, from her first piece of music Berceuse Op 2 (Lullaby, 1897) which she wrote at the age of 12, to the Humoresque and Caprice Op 54 (1920), composed few years before she died. Her piano style is opulently sonorous and richly coloured, and in her harmonic expression she often uses abrupt modulations, alterations and tonalities with a great number of accidentals. From the youthful miniatures in the style of Late Romanticism, through the impressionistic colours of the middle period works, to the expressionistic and reflexive compositions of her late period, Dora Pejacevic matured to the full power of her creativity. All the miniatures have names, as do similar works by Grieg, Schumann and Tchaikovsky. In her essay on programmatic music the composer voiced her decidedly negative opinion concerning the naïve descriptiveness that takes the listener away from the essence of the work of music. Instead, she dedicates herself to the kind of programme approach that inspires the imagination, leaving full freedom of experience. Her titles are but guidelines to the basic atmosphere and character of an individual composition.

Inhalt / Content:

• Berceuse op.2
• Gondellied op.4
• Chanson sans paroles op.5
• Papillon op.6
• Menuette op.7
• Impromptu op.9a
• Chanson sans paroles op.10
• Trauermarsch op. 14
• Berceuse op.20
• Valse de concert op.21
• Erinnerung op.24
• 2 Intermezzi op.38
• Capriccio op.47