La clavecinista Mitzi Meyerson nació en el seno de una familia musical en Chicago, y comenzó su carrera concertística a los siete años. Tras completar sus estudios universitarios en Chicago y Oberlin, se trasladó a Londres y fundó el Trio Sonnerie (con Monica Hugget y Sarah Cunningham), conjunto con el que realizó una intensa actividad concertística y discográfica.
Mitzi Meyerson ha editado más de cincuenta grabaciones, entre los que se encuentran recitales a solo de Buxtehude y Duphly, así como las obras completas de Forqueray y de Fischer, todo proyectos excelentemente recibidos por la crítica. Sus publicaciones más recientes incluyen dos discos dobles para Glossa, con música de Georg Böhm y de Claude-Bénigne Balbastre, respectivamente, proyectos ambos que recibieron el prestigioso premio de la Deutsche Schallplattenkritik como mejores grabaciones del año. También recientes están sus discos para el Musikinstrumenten Museum de Berlín, y Les Ombres Errantes, que incluye cuatro Ordres completos del Cuarto Libro de François Couperin, nuevamente para Glossa. Tras su colaboración con Nigel Kennedy y la Orquesta Filarmónica de Berlín (EMI), Mitzi Meyerson está preparando un nuevo álbum doble para Glossa, en esta ocasión con composiciones de Theofilo Muffat.
Además de su actividad como solista, Mitzi Meyerson es también fundadora de The Bottom Line, un conjunto variable dedicado al repertorio para instrumentos bajos, generalmente dedicados a realizar el bajo continuo. The Bottom Line, cuya formación más habitual ha sido bautizada como Berliner Cembalo Ensemble y está integrada por tres a cinco clavecines, cuenta con un repertorio cada vez más extenso y aparece regularmente en los grandes festivales europeos. Meyerson es catedrática en la Universität der Künste de Berlín, la primera universidad que ofreció los estudios de clavecín y creó la cátedra especialmente para Wanda Landowska. Una de sus especialidades es el trabajo con pianistas modernos, a los que ayuda a afrontar la música de Bach desde una perspectiva barroca, a través del trabajo sobre aspectos como la articulación y la estructura armónica.
Mitzi Meyerson reparte el tiempo entre su intensa actividad docente y sus numerosos compromisos concertísticos. Sus otros intereses incluyen la fotografía (ha realizado varias exposiciones en Alemania y en Inglaterra), el trabajo social (es voluntaria en una maternidad en Bali), el sumo y su precioso gato persa, Yofi.
Georg Friedrich Händel completely dominated the musical scene in 18th century London. A rich musical life continued in concert halls, theatres, and churches, but many of the excellent composers of that time were simply wiped out by the overwhelming presence of Händel. I have long been interested in discovering some of these lost artists, bringing them back into their rightful position as the great musicians of their time. (article by Mitzi Meyerson) [read more...]
Emboldened by her experiences with the solo keyboard of the shadowy English composer from the first half of the 18th century, Richard Jones (the Sets of Lessons for the Harpsichord, London, 1732 – recorded in 2010), and propelled by her zest for rediscovering unwarrantedly neglected music for her instrument, Mitzi Meyerson has returned to the music of this enigmatic figure with a second release on Glossa: Jones’s Chamber Airs for a Violin (and Thorough Bass). This collection of violin sonatas was published in London and 1735 and for the new recording Meyerson is joined by violinist Kreeta-Maria Kentala and cellist Lauri Pulakka. How much music from this time is lying mouldering unloved and in archives, but deserving being put in front of audiences today is, of course, at best an inexact art. However, as listeners, we can be grateful for the labours of talented performers like Mitzi Meyerson, who are also equipped with the appropriate scholarly skills and the intuitive nous to help them separate the wheat from the chaff. [read more...]
It is not only discerning music lovers around the globe who are giving a warm welcome to the recordings which are being published on Glossa; critical approval in the specialist media has been joining in as well. One example of the latter is the newly-instigated International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) which, for its inaugural 2011 edition, has chosen no less than nine of Glossa’s recent releases in its initial nominations. [read more...]
Mitzi Meyerson has been delving of late for Glossa into unjustly forgotten keyboard repertory from the Baroque. Praised by no less a critic than Nicholas Kenyon for her recording of Gottlieb Muffat’s Componimenti Musicali per il Cembalo (“Eureka! I’ve known these wonderful pieces for years, having bought an old edition of the music, but have never heard them properly performed. So it’s a joy to hear Mitzi Meyerson’s glorious realisation of these 18th-century suites, which lie at the heart of the high baroque style...”), Meyerson now turns her attention to the shadowy figure of Englishman Richard Jones. [read more...]
There are keyboard players whose names adorn books of technical exercises – Carl Czerny, Charles-Louis Hanon and JB Cramer spring to mind – but Mitzi Meyerson, Glossa’s very own expert in sumo wrestling, social work and a Persian cat named Yofi, is cast from a somewhat different mould. It will not just be piano and harpsichord students who will have cause to recall the Chicago-born artist but any number of her fellow citizens (including non keyboard-playing cabbies) now that the ‘Mitzi Meyerson Way’ has officially been opened outside the main entrance to Roosevelt University on downtown Wabash Avenue in Chicago’s 2nd Ward. [read more...]
Mitzi Meyerson’s insight into (and experience with) the harpsichord literature of the Baroque is such that when she makes a visit to the recording studio, one knows that something rare, fascinating and illuminating will emerge. This has been the case in recent years with both the Claviersuiten by Georg Böhm and the Musique de Salon of Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (which have also appeared on Glossa); the latest exploration beyond the mainstream undertaken by Mitzi Meyerson – Muffat’s Componimenti Musicali – is charged with the same character and sense of expectation. This is not the Georg Muffat who studied in Paris with Lully but his son, Gottlieb (also known as Theofilo), who spent much of his career in Vienna and whose set of six harpsichord suites Componimenti Musicali appeared towards the end of the 1730s. [read more...]