Please download PDF above. This article was originally published in the May 2017 issue of the Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music and is re-issued here as a courtesy of the Alliance.

During her lifetime Luise Greger (1862-1944) achieved great recognition in her home country of Germany and across Europe as a chamber singer and Lieder composer, but her works and life are hardly known today. She composed more than 100 Lieder during her lifetime.

In an article to mark her 70th birthday in 1932, the Kasseler-Post offered the following tribute: “Her Lieder belong in the repertoire of famous male and female singers. Her melodies have already been heard in Dresden and Leipzig, at Munich’s Odeon-Theater, the Gürzenich Hall in Cologne, and in many other cities, most frequently, of course, at concerts in Kassel, garnering great applause….”

The Author

French pianist and historical musicologist Paul-André Bempéchat is Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University’s Leverett House. A product of The Juilliard School and the Sorbonne, he has gained renown for his interpretations of the First Viennese School, Schumann, Brahms and Chopin.  His career has brought him to major philharmonics in Europe and festivals as prestigious as the Wiener Festwochen.

M. Bempéchat is the international authority on Jean Cras, the only pupil of Henri Duparc, an eclectic exponent of French art song.  A revised and expanded second edition of Jean Cras, Polymath of Music and Lettres (Routledge, 2009) will appear in August 2018 with Peter Lang Academic Publishing. His volume of collected essays on Gustav Mahler, Naturlauf, to which Maestro Hampson himself contributed, was released in 2016 by Peter Lang.

In March 2017, M. Bempéchat was conferred a knighthood by the French government, as Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.