Music Meets Drama

Recently I had the pleasure of reading Mary Sharratt's new book, Ecstasy .  A fiction based on fact  book about composer, Alma Mahler, who was the wife of composer Gustav Mahler.  Many thanks to her publisher for sending me the book.    Below is my review of  Ecstasy   with hopes that you the readers of my blog will read the book.   The late 19 th century was witness to three women composers of renown – Clara Wieck Schumann, Fanny Mendelsohn Hensel and Alma Schindler Mahler.  All three had their compositional talents repressed by the men in their lives - Clara’s husband, Robert, and Fanny by both her brother Felix and father.  Alma Mahler’s pianistic skills, as well as her intuitive and subtle understanding of music, portray a woman of musical talent beyond the norm.  Her career was stifled by not only her mother but her composition teachers and future husband.  Clara and Alma’s husbands were over-achievin...

Recently a CD of turn of the century symphonic works was released on the Naxos label.  Entitled American Romantics III ,  the CD includes works by Carl Busch, Edward MacDowell, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Cecil Burleigh, Ludwig Bonvin, David Stanley Smith and Gena Branscombe.  The music is performed by the Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Reuben Blundell .  All the music on the CD was provided by the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music at the Free Library of Philadelphia .  Edwin Fleisher (1877-1959) did not intend to have an orchestral library but rather a Symphony Club that trained students interested in playing orchestral music.  One of the first employees of the Symphony Club was William Happich (1884-1959), a teacher and conductor.  For his students, Happich would arrange works from the collection.  Miss Branscombe’s violin and piano work, “A Memory” was arranged for harp and strings.  The work is beautiful...