Essential Pejačević
Born in Hungary in 1885 into a Croatian noble family, Dora Pejačević is a composer whose music deserves to be better known. Much of it remains unpublished and unrecorded, and it was only on the centenary of her birth in 1985 that her music became more widely appreciated.
Read more…Dora started composing at the age of 12 and was largely self-taught (her surviving papers are filled with exercises in theory, counterpoint and instrumentation). She enjoyed a cultured, cosmopolitan upbringing and travelled widely, mingling with the leading artists and intellectuals of the day, including the writers Rainer Maria Rilke, Annette Kolb and Karl Kraus, some of whose writing she set to music. Now regarded as one of the most influential figures in Croatian music, she is credited with bringing orchestral song to Croatia and wrote many beautiful works in the late-Romantic style, including lieder, piano miniatures, a symphony, and chamber works, all mirroring her wide intellectual horizons. Her writing for piano is particularly fine, revealing a clear appreciation of the expressive capabilities of the instrument.
Her early works show the influence of composers such as Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, but stylistically she is closest to Rachmaninoff, and her music readily holds it own against his, with its romantic lyricism, luxuriant orchestration and opulent, piquant harmonies, replete with nostalgia and poignancy. "When I'm floating off into this invisible world of my most personal and inner thoughts," Pejačević said, "only then do I become my real self", and she gradually established her own style also drawing on rhythms, melodies and idioms reflecting her Croatian origins.