Dora Pejačević’s Cello Sonata in E minor, Op. 35

This March, the Daily Classical Music Post will introduce you to some of the most wonderful music ever composed—and, yes, it will all be by women composers!

https://youtu.be/-chTjgzSkQs

Dora Pejačević (10 September 1885–5 March 1923) was a Croatian composer. Although she was born into a noble family, during World War I she saw so much suffering that it served to alienate her from her family and friends.

Pamela Blevins says, "Dora was fluent in several languages, including English, and easily shifted among them in her voracious reading. Curiosity was the driving force in her life. She was interested in politics; she knew how to talk to the men and women in the street and understood them. . . . Dora started to compose at the age of twelve. Fortunately her parents recognized her natural gifts and allowed her to study abroad. She was largely self-taught in music, which is remarkable considering the inventiveness, rich brilliance and enduring quality of her compositions. Beginning in 1913, Dora entered a rich period of artistic maturity marked by steady productivity. She composed her first orchestral work, a piano concerto in 1913 when she was twenty-eight. She was the first Croatian composer to write a concerto."

Pejačević married relatively late in life, in 1921, and died in Munich in 1923 from complications following a difficult childbirth.

Pejačević’s Cello Sonata in E minor, Op. 35 was composed at the start of her productive period, in 1913. It is a wonderfully Romantic work, full of passion. It should be performed far more often than it is.

My classical music post for today is Dora Pejačević’s Cello Sonata in E minor, Op. 35.
 

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