The biographies of the female composers
of the first half of the concert (16.6.2023)

 

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909 Lodz-1969 Warsaw)
is the most important Polish female composer of the first half of the 20th century and the first to achieve international renown. Bacewicz was a multiply talented artist, who for a long time pursued her career as a violinist and as a composer at the same time and as a composer, leaving behind an oeuvre of over two hundred compositions of various genres and instrumentations. In the foreground was her preoccupation with string instruments in general and the violin in particular. Many of her works
for violin as well as for piano were premiered by her.
As vice-president of the Polish Composers' Association (ZKP), she was involved in the dissemination of Polish music in Europe.
Polish music in Europe and beyond. For Bacewicz, the central subjects of discussion were the classical form
and the treatment of tonality. From a tonal language often described as neoclassical Bacewicz's later compositions move from a tonal language often described as neo-classical to tonal-coloristic, sonoristic procedures. If one takes into account the dramatic historical situation before which Bacewicz lived and worked in Poland and the demands she made on her two professions and her her two professions and her task as a wife and mother, the abundance, rank and content of her
content of her compositional work are all the more impressive.
mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de

Lili Boulanger (1893 Paris-1918 Mézy-sur-Seine)
Lili Boulanger's biography can only be understood in the context of the biography of her entire family, especially that of her older sister Nadia (1887-1979). Her short, sorrowful life is closely connected with the Paris Conservatoire. Her extraordinary talent enabled her to reach great artistic maturity as a composer in the short time artistic maturity in the short time of her life.
Lili Boulanger's life and work are documented in minute detail by her sister Nadia Boulanger and by information provided by her sister Nadia Boulanger. Her work is characterized by a deep religiosity, which was probably caused by the realization of a life
of a life shortened by her illness. Other works convey a rather pessimistic mood already in the title. Her tonal language oscillates between traditional and avant-garde, in the works with orchestra she is sometimes orchestral works, it is sometimes powerful, in line with contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky for composers such as Olivier Messiaen and Arthur Honegger.
mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de

Nazife Aral Güran (1921 Vienna-1993)
was born in Vienna as the daughter of a Turkish diplomat. As a child she received her first her first music lessons with her mother. Due to the diplomatic career of her father's diplomatic career, the composer's family moved very often.
Her musical education took her to Germany, where she studied piano at the Hochschule für Musik Berlin and Musikhochschule Köln, where she studied piano and composition. In Ankara Nazife Güran was a student of the exiled German conductor and music theorist Ernst Praetorius. In her work, Güran often referred to political events, such as the Korean War or the assassination of the Korean War or the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
In 1969 she settled in Turkey, where she worked as a composer and music teacher. Nazife Güran was an active campaigner for women's rights and was the founder of the of the Turkish-American Women's Cultural Association. Although Güran received her musical education in Europe, she often used Turkish music in her work, often drew on Turkish musical traditions in her work. She left behind an oeuvre of over 1000 works, a substantial works, a significant part of which is piano literature.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazife_Güran

Clara Wieck Schumann (1819 Leipzig-1896 Frankfurt a.M.)
entered the public stage at the age of nine and worked her entire life in the public. With her more than sixty years of activity she influenced as an international as an international star, as a piano teacher, and finally as a professor at the newly founded
Hoch'schen Konservatorium in Frankfurt am Main, which was founded in 1878.
For her, making music was not limited to playing the piano alone, but also encompassed theoretical and practical knowledge of music. Singing and violin playing were as much a part of her were as much a part of her education as composing. Her early compositions were intended as for her own repertoire, and they were intended to show the breadth of her musical profile as a virtuoso.
When Clara Schumann died in 1896, her artistic authority and her musical musical merits were still present. She was ranked among the great, exemplary female figures of her century. In the twenties of the 20th century, her musical skills were forgotten. It was not until the 1960s that the artist and especially the composer were rediscovered by women's studies. Since then, her compositions have gradually been made available in new editions, partly in first editions, have been made generally accessible. Today they are at least consciousness.
mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de

Alice Mary Smith (1893 London-1884 ibid.)
was an English composer. Her Symphony in C minor from 1863 is considered to be the as the first completed and performed symphony by a female composer in England.
Smith grew up in London as the daughter of a lace merchant. She received private lessons with William Sterndale Bennett and George Alexander Macfarren. In 1867, she was made a Female Professional Associate of the Royal Philharmonic Society, and in 1883, she was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music. Smith composed chamber music as well as orchestral and stage works. The composer also created a considerable collection of sacred choral music, edited by Leonard Sanderman and recorded with The Eoferwic Consort.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Mary_Smith

Judit Varga (January 12, 1979 in Györ-)
is a Hungarian composer and pianist. She composes classical contemporary music, film and theater music. As a pianist and chamber musician she has performed in many countries. She is increasingly looking for new impulses both in her compositions and in her pedagogical activities. She lives and works in Vienna and in Budapest.
In 2013-2019 she was a lecturer at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Budapest and taught the subjects of composition, applied and film music, and historical composition techniques. Since 2019 she has held the professorship of Applied and Film Music and Historical Composition Techniques at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.
In 2017 Judit Varga was awarded for her artistic and pedagogical work with the Béla Bartók Ditta Pásztory Prize, one of the highest prizes in Hungary. In 2018, Judit Varga was awarded the Ferenc Erkel Prize. In 2019, Judit Varga was awarded the prestigious TONALi Composition Prize for her composiztion "Pendulum". Her works are performed worldwide by renowned festivals and houses, such as Wien Modern, Hungarian State Opera, Cité de la musique Paris, Juilliard School New York,
CAFe Budapest Contemporary Arts Festival, Mini-Festival, Konzerthaus Wien, Musikverein Vienna, Muffathalle Munich or Warsaw Autumn. Varga works with orchestras and ensembles from all over the world, among others with Ensemble
Ensemble Modern, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Choir of the Hungarian State Opera, UMZE Ensemble, Concerto Budapest, Ensemble Kontrapunkte, Riot Ensemble London, ensemble XX. jahrhundert (eXXj) and the Hungarian Radio Choir.
Varga was nominated by the Austrian Film Academy in 2013, 2014 and 2020 for the award "Best Music". For the film music of the movie "Deine Schönheit ist nichts wert" she received the Austrian Film Award in 2014. In 2016, her new score to the Soviet classic "The Strange Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks" (director: L. Kuleschow), a composition by the Wiener
Konzerthaus, as part of the "Film + Music Live" subscription in the great hall of the Vienna Konzerthaus for the first time.
In 2016, her opera "Szerelem" ("Love"), a commission from the Hungarian State Opera and winner of the opera competition "60 Years of Hungarian Revolution" was performed at the Hungarian State Opera. The opera received outstandingly positive reviews
in international journals. In 2022/23 Varga is Composer of the Year at the Palais of Arts in Budapest (Müpa). In 2022 Varga was honored with the Outstanding Artist Award of the Austrian Ministry of for Art and Culture.