Piano Miniatures, vol. 3

Dora Pejačević (1885 – 1923) is one of the most talentet female composers at the turn of the 18th and 19th 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 Našice (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... Along with classic chamber forms, she composed a series of miniatures for violin and piano with programmatic titles. Her early compositions in the genre were the explorations of the young artist, written before 1908, and went no further than the level of attractive drawing-room music. The Canzonetta Op. 8, the Menuett Op. 18 and the Romanza Op. 22 nevertheless demonstrate a sound knowledge of the possibilities of the violin - it should be mentioned that the composer was a skilful violinist - but they speak out in conventional Romantic idiom. However, two short compositions for violin and piano written during the time of the composer’s full creative maturity, and very near to the time of the major chamber works, are distinctive works. They are the Elegy Op. 34 (1913) and Meditation Op. 51 (1919). Dedicated to the memory of Johannes Nádherny, the dead brother of the composer’s close friend, Sidonia Nádherny von Borutin, the Elegy has the character of a dramatic lament whose expressive force is in dense, chromatic post-Wagnerian harmony. Similarly, the Meditation is carried along by the tenseness of the harmonic progressions and conceived in one great arch which stills only in the final bar of the composition. Here, Dora Pejačević also created a new relationship between the violin and the piano, distancing herself from the traditional relationship of the instrument providing melody and its accompaniment. (Koraljka Kos)