Marie Jaëll: Complete Works for Piano Vol. 1

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 opens a series of recordings by Cora Irsen. The pianist discovers the huge oeuvre of Jaëll written for piano.

This first part decidedly contrasts early piano works – as the sonata and the album leave (“Feuillet d’album”) – and late compositions created under the influence of Franz Liszt, who’s intimate Marie Jaëll was namely after her husband’s death.