The Alsace born pianist Marie Jaëll is today mostly known within music history because of her pedagogic works. This image does not meet all the bequeathed information on her life and work: The in her lifetime celebrated piano player and wise pedagogue left a riche and impressive compositional oeuvre not only for her proper instrument.
Influenced by the spirit of romanticism, but also by the creative independency of the well-educated Parisian “dame de salon”, but first of all by her reputed extraordinary virtuosity she developed her distinctive style, which appears attracting not only to enthusiasts of piano music from the romantic era.
This CD is the second part of a series of recordings by Cora Irsen. The pianist discovers the huge oeuvre of Jaëll written for piano. “18 pièces pour piano d’après la lecture de Dante“ represents an exceptional composition within the era. In this cycle following Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” the composer appears as one of the precursors of modern music thinking and namely of the French impressionist piano school by challenging the possibilities of her instrument in an extremely intelligent way.