Due to health reasons, conductor Glass Marcano unfortunately had to cancel her participation in the ceremonial opening of the International Brucknerfest Linz 2023. We are pleased that Rebecca Miller will take over the conducting in her place!
"All fathers and mothers should think twice or three times before they take the highly responsible decision to educate their daughters as artists or even as music teachers. The question on the answer to which everything depends here, that of talent, is usually not even considered. Cooks, seamstresses, saleswomen are incomparably more useful and happier members of human society than those pitiable creatures [...]." The influential music critic Otto Gumprecht, who published these lines in the Berlin National-Zeitung in 1882, was certainly not the only one to hold this view at the end of the 19th century. In spite of this, more than a few female composers defied the reactionary patriarchy and, as the musical program of the ceremony shows, even ventured into the hard-fought terrain of representative orchestral music.
Together with the conductor Rebecca Miller, the Upper Austrian Youth Symphony Orchestra performs masterful music with works by Emilie Mayer, Louise Farrenc, Augusta Holmès and Ethel Smyth, revealing that many a critic should perhaps have tried his luck as a cook, seamstress or salesman.
Emilie Mayer (1812–1883)
Faust Overture in B minor for large orchestra, op. 46 (1880)
Louise Farrenc (1804–1875)
Overture No. 2 in E-flat major, op. 24 (1834)
Augusta Holmès (1847–1903)
La nuit et l'amour. Interlude from the symphonic ode Ludus pro Patria (1888)
Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)
Overture to the one-act opera The Boatswain's Mate (1913-14)
The March of the Women for mixed chorus and orchestra (1910)
Mozart choir of the music high school Linz
Choir of the music high school Bad Leonfelden
Upper Austrian Youth Symphony Orchestra
Rebecca Miller | Conductor
Anna Baar | Speaker
Irene Suchy | Moderator