Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) - 1re Symphonie (1841)

Joyeux anniversaire Louise Farrenc! 🥂🎻 Composer: Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) Work: 1re Symphonie (do mineur), (1841) Performers: L’Orchestre De Bretagne; Stefan Sаndеrling (conductor) 1re Symphonie (1841) 1. Andante Sostenuto, allegro 0:00 2. Adagio cantabile 11:20 3. Minuetto 18:41 4. Allegro Assai 23:14 Painting: François-Edouard Picot (1786-1868) - Le triomphe de la Ville de Paris (1842) HD image: Further info: Listen free: --- (Jeanne) Louise Farrenc [née Dumont] (Paris, 31 May 1804 - Paris, 15 September 1875) French composer, pianist, teacher and scholar. She studied music with Antonín Reicha. In 1821 she married (Jacques Hippolyte) Aristide Farrenc (1794-1865), but was not entirely eclipsed by his acknowledged eminence. Her three symphonies had respectable performances: No.1 in Brussels (1845), No.2 in Paris (1846), and No.3 in Paris (1849); the last received an accolade in the prestigious, and definitely male-oriented, Gazette Musicale, which conceded that “she revealed, alone among her sex in musical Europe, genuine learning, united with grace and taste.“ She also wrote a piano concerto, 30 etudes in all major and minor keys for piano, 2 piano trios, cello sonata, 2 violin sonatas, 2 piano quintets, and a sextet and a nonet for winds and strings. One of her overtures (1840) was reviewed by Hector Berlioz, who remarked that it was orchestrated “with a talent rare among women.“ She was a brilliant pianist, and taught piano at the Paris Conservatory from 1842 until 1872, the only woman ever to hold a permanent position as an instrumentalist there in the 19th century. After the death of her husband in 1865, she assumed the editorship of his monumental collection ’Le Tresor des pianistes’. Her role in music history carries significance beyond that ordinarily accorded to competent minor composers. Having worked in a society whose women musicians attained prominence mainly as performers, and in a cultural environment which valued only theatre and salon music, she merits recognition as a pioneering scholar and a forerunner of the French musical renaissance of the 1870s. Her daughter Victorine Farrenc (1826-1859) was also a talented pianist whose promising career was cut short by an early death.