Sonata for Cello and Piano in E Minor, Op. 35

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... Dora Pejačević's only Sonata for Cello and Piano in E Minor, Op. 35, (1913; revised in 1915) is an accomplished work from the point of view of technique, and impressive in its romantic zest and cantability. There is an interesting third movement - the Adagio sostenuto - all in 5/4 metre. Its basic melancholic mood is interrupted in the middle by dramatic accents. An important role is played in forming the large gradation in this movement by the growth in density of the setting and its final reduction to the original chord texture.