Robena Anne Laidlaw

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Robena Anne Laidlaw, lithograph by Franz Eybl , Vienna 1840

Robena Anne Laidlaw (born April 30, 1819 in West Bretton near Wakefield , Yorkshire , † May 29, 1901 in London ) was an English pianist.

Life

Her parents were the merchant and landowner Alexander Laidlaw and Ann Laidlaw born in Ireland . Keddy. She herself attended an educational institute in Edinburgh from 1827 . There the pianist Robert Muller discovered and promoted her musical talent. In 1830 the family moved to Königsberg , where they were tutored by the musician Georg Tag and soon made so great progress that their father sent them to Berlin in 1834 . In particular, the wife of the Duke of Cumberland , who later became Queen of Hanover , was so impressed by her playing that she appointed her court pianist. In the spring of 1835 she traveled to London and played there in St James's Palace for Queen Adelheid and as part of a Paganini concert. In 1836 she lived temporarily again in Berlin and was tutored by Ludwig Berger . In the following years she went on numerous concert tours and gave concerts in Vienna , Berlin, Dresden , Leipzig , Frankfurt am Main and Saint Petersburg .

On July 2, 1837, the now 18-year-old gave a matinee in the Leipzig Gewandhaus and got to know Robert Schumann , who dedicated his Fantasiestücke Op. 12 to her, which appeared in print in February 1838. She later wrote memoirs of Schumann, in which she describes how he mixed up her first names and called her "Anna Robena Laidlaw" because he found this more musical. This version of her name can also be found on the title page of Fantasiestücke op. 12. However, as her handwritten signature on her portrait lithograph shows, “Robena Anne Laidlaw” is the correct name form. Schumann and Laidlaw conducted an intensive correspondence until 1839, which shows that she apparently spoke fluent German.

In 1840 she settled in London, married George Thomson there in 1852 and withdrew from the public.

literature

  • Anonymous, short biography, in: Yearbooks of the German National Association for Music and Science , Vol. 1 (1839), p. 184 ( digitized version )
  • Gustav Schilling , Encyclopedia of the Entire Musical Sciences or Universal Lexicon of Tonkunst , Supplement-Band, Stuttgart 1842, pp. 266–268 ( digitized version )
  • F. Gustav Jansen , Robert Schumann and Robena Laidlaw , in: Die Grenzboten , Volume 54.4, 1895, pp. 320–332 ( digitized version )
  • Anonymous, Nekrolog, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , Volume 97, No. 38 of September 18, 1901, p. 469 ( digitized version )
  • F. Gustav Jansen, Miss Anna Robena Laidlaw , in: Journal of the International Music Society , 1901/02, pp. 188–192 ( digitized version )
  • Annie Wilson Patterson, Schumann , London 1903, pp. 105–117 ( digitized version )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See also Robert Schumann, Diaries , ed. by Gerd Nauhaus , Volume 2, Leipzig 1987, p. 33
personal data
SURNAME Laidlaw, Robena Anne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English pianist
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH West Bretton , Yorkshire
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1901
Place of death London