Beatrice Langley

Beatrice Cordelia Langley (born January 12, 1872 in Chudleigh , Devonshire , † May 11, 1958 in Teignmouth ) was an English violinist.

Langley was the daughter of William Savage Langley , a senior military officer in the Royal Artillery, and Cordelia Catherine Mitchell . In her childhood and youth she had private violin lessons with Joseph Ludwig and August Wilhelmj in London. It is possible that she studied from 1903 to 1906 at the Royal University of Music with Gabriele Wietrowetz , Karl Klingler and Joseph Joachim .

Langley made her first public appearance in 1882. In Dublin she played the obligatory violin part in Gaetano Braga's Serenata . Occasional appearances are also documented from the later 1880s. In November 1893 she made her debut in London at the Crystal Palace with Max Bruch's First Violin Concerto and a Capriccio by Niels Gade under the direction of August Manns . A few days later, she played with the London Symphony Concerts under the direction of George Henschel Louis Spohr's Violin Concerto no. 9. In February 1894, she joined the Imperial Institute Orchestra under the direction of Alberto Randegger with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Violin Concerto in E minor.

1895 Langley first appeared in a concert of singer Emma Albani in the Queen's Hall on (accompanied by the pianist Fanny Davies ). In the following years she accompanied Albani on several concert tours through England, the USA, South Africa, Canada and Newfoundland. Before the concert tour in 1896, she married the author and journalist Bazil Tozer . Her other musical partners at the turn of the century included the pianist Agnes Zimmermann , the violinist Alice Elieson , the sisters Louise and Jeanne Douste de Fortis , Adelina de Lara and Percy Grainger . In the 1900/01 season she played at the Promenade Concerts under Henry Wood , in 1905 she gave the world premiere of William Bredt's New Hungarian Melodies in London .

In 1906 Langley and Mathilde Verne founded the almost thirty concert series Thursday Twelve O'Clocks in London's Æolian Hall . She also founded the Mukle Langley Quartet with the cellist May Mukle and performed in other chamber music formations. In 1907 she played in an ensemble called Mme. Beatrice Langley's Quartet with Marjorie Hayward , Sybil Maturin and Adelina Leon ; the line-up later changed several times. In 1910 she played Frank Bridge's string quartet with Mukle and the composer , in 1916 with Juliette Folville and Warwick Evans Maurice Ravel's piano trio in A minor and in 1919 a piano trio by John Ireland with Roger Quilter and Cedric Sharpe .

Langley was also active in the field of the English women's movement. She appeared in 1909 with an English Ladies Orchestral Society and in 1911 she participated in an entertainment program for Census Resisters by Woman Suffrage with her own concert with Ethel Smyth . Around 1920 she developed arthritis and had to give up her career as a violin soloist. According to her sister Rosalind Langley , however, she founded her own string orchestra, which existed until 1948 and gave music lessons to the layman. Nothing is known about either activity.

swell

• University of Music and Theater Hamburg - Music and Gender on the Internet - Lexicon - Beatrice Langley
• Sophie Drinker Institute - European female instrumentalists of the 18th and 19th centuries - Langley, Beatrice
• ancestry - Beatrice Cordelia Langley

Individual evidence

1. ^ Henry Wood: My Life of Music . London 1938, p. 200 . “A popular lady violinist, Beatrice Langley, who used to appear at very important At Home or soirée , played at a Promenade concert this season; [...] ".