Liza Lehmann

Liza Lehmann

Elisabetha Nina Mary Frederica Lehmann (* 11. July 1862 in London , † 19th September 1918 ibid ) was an English composer , singer and pianist .

Liza Lehmann was the daughter of the singer, music teacher and composer Amalia Lehmann and the German painter Rudolf Lehmann . She spent the first five years of her life with her parents in Italy. She received piano lessons as a child, and after her first singing lessons from her mother, she studied with Jenny Lind at the Royal Conservatory of Music . On further trips with the family, she took composition lessons with Niels Ravnkilde in Rome and Wilhelm Freudenberg in Wiesbaden and continued her singing studies with Alberto Randegger in London .

In 1883 she made her debut at the Monday Popular Concerts in London. At her first public concert she performed with Wilma Neruda , Franz Neruda and Max von Pauer and was accompanied on the piano by Mary Wurm . She quickly made a reputation for herself as a concert and oratorio singer in London's musical life. During a visit by Franz Liszt in 1886, she sang in two concerts in St. James'S Hall under the direction of Alberto Randegger and in the Crystal Palace under the direction of August Manns . At the Monday Popular Concerts of the same year she appeared on stage alongside Joseph Joachim , Clara Schumann , Agnes Zimmermann , Max von Pauer and Alfredo Piatti .

In the following years there were also international successes, for example at the Norwich Musical Festival in 1887 with the soprano part in Camille Saint-Saëns ' setting of the 19th Psalm and at a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Joseph Joachim. In 1888 she sang songs by Robert Schumann accompanied by Clara Schumann at St. James's Hall in London . In the Princes's Hall she organized her own concerts with the singer Lena Little, among others . Around the same time, her first compositions appeared, including a collection of German and English-language songs and ten sketches for piano, which were premiered by Fanny Davies .

In 1894 Lehmann married the painter and composer Robert Bedford and after a farewell concert in which Marian McKenzie , Alice Gomez , David Bispham , Plunket Green , Fanny Davies and Alma Haas-Holländer took part, he withdrew from public concerts for a long time. In 1896 she composed the song cycle In a Persian Garden for four voices and piano the Rubaiyāt by Omar Khayyām in the transfer of Edward FitzGerald , which was premiered at the London Popular Concerts after a private performance with Emma Albani , Hilda Wilson , Ben Davies and David Bispham and made it known to the USA.

In addition to other songs and song cycles, she composed several collections of songs for children and young people such as The Daisy-Chain (1900) and More Daisies (1902) based on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lilies of The Valley. A Medley of Old English Songs (1907). From 1904 onwards he also wrote several works for the stage and plays, including Sergeant Brue based on a libretto by Hickory Wood (1904), the operetta The Vicar of Wakefield based on the novel by Oliver Goldsmith (libretto by Laurence Hausman , 1906), and the stage music for Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince (1908) and Everyman. A morality play (1915).

From 1905 Lehmann also appeared again in public, but no longer as a singer, but as a piano accompanist in performances of her own songs by singers such as Louise Dale , Nancy Price , Palgrave Turner , Hubert Eisdell and Fraser Gange . In 1910 she gave two concerts in New York's Carnegie Hall , where she performed her own works, including In a Persian Garden , Nonsens Songs and the Breton Folk Songs , and another in 1912 at New York's Hudson Theater with Blanche Tomlin and Palgrave Turner, Hubert Eisdell and Julian Henry and excerpts from The Golden Threshold , the Nonsense Verses , The Happy Prince and Four Cautionary Tales and a Moral .

1911-12 Lehmann was the first president of the Society of Women Musicians . From 1914 she took over a professorship for singing at the Guildhall School of Music . The concerts with her students were very popular in London. For teaching purposes, she published Useful Teaching Songs for All Voices in 1917 . A year after her death, her husband published her memoir under the title The Life of Liza Lehmann . A Liza Lehmann Prize was donated to the Guildhall School of Music, which the singer Doreen Kendall received in 1925 .

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• University of Music and Theater Hamburg - Music and Gender on the Internet - Liza Lehmann
• Klassika - Liza Lehmann's curriculum vitae