Emilie Mayer (1812-1883) is a rare example of a 19th c. woman composer who was celebrated and successful in her own time. She composed several symphonies and concert overtures in addition to chamber music and songs. Her works are stylistically influenced by Viennese Classicism and Beethoven, although she increasingly found her own tonal language. In the 1860s she composed mainly chamber music; early Romantic echoes are particularly evident in her violin sonatas. Emilie Mayer is one of the most important woman composers of the 19th century.
From 1841 to 1847 Emilie Mayer studied with Carl Loewe in Stettin. During this time, she wrote some of her first compositions, such as the symphonies in C and E minor and several chamber music works. On Carl Loewe's recommendation, from 1847 she completed further musical studies in Berlin with Adolf Bernhard Marx. She then went on concert tours to Vienna, Halle, Hamburg and Stettin. In Berlin, she wrote further chamber music works and symphonies, as well as the Faust Overture, which were performed in numerous cities.
Emilie Mayer remained unmarried. She kept her own open house in Berlin and maintained contacts with important figures in social and aristocratic life. She was one of the best known and most productive female composers of the Romantic period, as is shown by her large output: eight symphonies, twelve string quartets, piano chamber music, fifteen concert overtures, violin and cello sonatas, piano works, a Singspiel, songs, and four-part choruses. Even so, her own catalog of works has not survived, and numerous compositions must be considered lost. Emilie Mayer's compositions were largely forgotten after her death and were only rediscovered by researchers from the mid-1980s onward.
Mayer’s Piano Concerto in B is a well-crafted three-movement work full of solid classical writing (many echoes from Mozart), but also some progressive harmonic language, as well as a highly virtuosic solo piano part. It appeared around 1850.
The concerto is here played by the FSOA (Female Symphonic Orchestra Austria), conducted by Silvia Spinnato and with Heghine Rapyan as solist.