Dorothee Eberhardt was born in Memmingen, Southern Germany on the 23rd January 1952. She studied musicology and composition at Goldsmiths College (B. Mus.) and clarinet at Trinity College, London (LTCL). Upon completion of her studies, she worked in London as a composer and music teacher. In 1992, she returned to Germany and now lives near Munich. Dorothee Eberhardt's works are performed and broadcast internationally, and in 1999, her first CD, featuring chamber music, was produced (Melisma no. 07175-2). In the beginning of 2004 her second CD (Cavalli Records CCD 263) and in June 2008 her third CD with chamber music has been released (Cavalli Records CCD 297). Her works are published by TRIO Musik Edition, Mühldorf and edition 49 (formerly Vogt&Fritz, Schweinfurt). Pieces in album collections are published by ABRSM Publishing, London, Ricordi and Schott.
Larysa Kuzmenko is a Toronto-based composer, pianist, and Juno nominee. Her works have been published by Boosey and Hawkes, commissioned, performed, broadcast, and recorded by many outstanding musicians all over the world. Some prominent ensemble and soloists who have performed her works include: the Toronto Symphony Orchestra directed by Peter Oundjian and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra directed by Bramwell Tovey, Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra directed by Jeffrey Moule, the Gryphon Trio, the Composer's Orchestra directed by Gary Kulesha, the New Hampshire Philharmonic directed by Mark Latham, flutist Susan Hoeppner, pianists Anton Kuerti and Christina Petrowska-Quilico, and cellist Shauna Rolston.
Her works demonstrate a strong affinity towards the mainstream of classical music. She imbues her music with a strong melodic sense, and a firm rooting in traditional, albeit extended tonal processes. She is currently on staff at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, where she teaches composition and piano.
Maria Teresa Agnesi was an Italian composer. Though she was most famous for her compositions, she was also an accomplished harpsichordist and singer, and the majority of her surviving compositions were written for keyboard, the voice, or both.
Maria Teresa first gained renown as a harpsichordist, earning the patronage of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. (Milan was ruled by the Habsburgs in the eighteenth century.) Agnesi was also known as a vocal performer.
By the age of twenty-seven, she was also gaining recognition as a composer. In addition to chamber music, her first major work was a cantata; Il ristoro d’Arcadia, composed in 1747 but now lost, was dedicated to imperial delegate Gian Luca Pallavicini.
Her first opera, Nitocri, was composed in 1752 and survives. In the same year, Maria Teresa Agnesi married Pier Antonio Pinotti.
In the following year she composed another opera, Ciro in Armenia, which was produced at the ducal theater in Milan for the king of Poland. Her opera La Sofonisba (1765) was dedicated to the Habsburg emperor Francis I for the name day of his wife, the Empress Maria Theresa.
Marina Dranishnikova (1929 –94), the daughter of Vladimir Dranishnikov, a friend of Prokofiev and composer who made his living mainly as a conductor, appears to have studied piano and composition at Leningrad Conservatory.
If she wrote anything else other than the piece getting an outing in the Russia in the Round festival, Poéme for oboe and piano, it has proved impossible to discover. However, the work’s lyrical outpouring strongly suggests she was far from being a beginner in 1953 when she wrote it.
Described as a challenging work and lasting a little short of ten minutes, Poéme was dedicated to the principal oboe of the Leningrad Philharmonic and was apparently prompted by an ‘unhappy love’ for an oboist – the word ‘tragic’ has also surfaced!
Henriette Puig-Roget was a French pianist, organist and music educator. Born in Bastia, she began her musical studies at the Conservatoire de Paris in 1919. She won 6 first prizes between 1926 and 1930 in the classes of Isidore Philipp, Jean Gallon and Noël Gallon, Maurice Emmanuel and Marcel Dupré: piano, harmony, music history, piano accompaniment, counterpoint, fugue, organ. She was also a student of Charles Tournemire in chamber music.
First Second Grand Prix de Rome in 1933, she was appointed the following year organist of the Oratoire du Louvre and the Grand Synagogue of Paris. She remained there until 1979 and 1952 respectively. As conductor of singing at the Opéra de Paris, she pursued a parallel career as a pianist on the radio from 1935, where she remained until 1975.
Henriette Roget, now Mrs. Ramon Puig-Vinyals, taught accompaniment at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1957. In 1979, she left to teach piano, music theory and chamber music at the Tokyo University of the Arts in Japan. Among his students from this Tokyo period were Kazuoki Fujii (pianist), Takenori Nemoto (French horn player), Hideki Nagano (pianist), Masakazu Natsuda (composer), Misato Mochizuki (composer) and Mami Sakato (organist).
♫ LISTEN Trois Ballades Françaises by Henriette Puig-Roget
Valborg Aulin was an eminent pianist, composer and piano teacher. She began her musical education at home, learning to play the piano from her grandmother, and soon was taking private lessons with Albert Rubenson, the director of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. She enrolled at the academy at the age of 17 and spent the next five years studying the piano and composition, before a Jenny Lind Scholarship allowed her to travel to Copenhagen in 1885 and to Paris the following year. Under the tutelage of Benjamin Godard and Jules Massenet, Aulin gained plenty of admirers, judging by this diary entry of her sister-in-law’s: “Despite her total lack of outward charm, which Frenchmen are so highly appreciative of, she became popular due to her immense talent.”
Returning to Sweden, Aulin embarked on a career as a pianist, often collaborating with her younger brother, Tor, a composer and the leader of a well-regarded string quartet. In addition to teaching, she composed chamber works, art songs, and pieces for the piano—mainly evocative one-movement works, with titles such as Valse elegiaque and Album Leaves, the exception being a large-scale, four-movement Sonata in F minor, the aforementioned Grande Sonate Sérieuse. At the age of 43, however, despite being an established figure in Stockholm’s cultural circles, Aulin decided to leave the capital and move to the inland city of Örebro, 125 miles to the west. There she began work as an organist and a teacher, continuing to perform, though ceasing to write music.
