Le sommeil de l'enfant. Berceuse par Teresa Carreño (live)

Dear friends of piano music, she must have been a gifted pianist, a fascinating woman, she is also called - which I find almost a little frightening - a Valkyrie of the piano... But what impresses me most about Teresa Carreno? A Venezuelan native, she was a child prodigy, rose to fame, was a mother of four children and married four times, with two of her husbands being brothers. She was also very popular in Germany, which could have been due, among other things, to the fact that she lived a larger part of her life in Coswig near Dresden and in Berlin. And that's the crux of the matter for me: she was an absolute celebrity in the second half of the 19th century, and today connoisseurs and lovers of 19th-century music have generally not even heard her name. One knows Fanny Hensel as Mendelssohn's sister and Clara Schumann as Robert Schumann's wife - but Teresa Carreno? We pianists don't have to kid ourselves - our work and our recognition is absolutely connected to the living person. Even today there are many famous pianists - whose names will be known in a hundred years? There will be a few recordings in sound and image, but fame and aftermath beyond one's own lifespan - why should it? But Teresa Carreno also composed, so she left something that lives on and needs to be taken care of. We pianists are indispensable as reproducing musicians, the composers need us as interpreters, as a medium for their art. It is a beautiful task to take responsibility for the music of others, to make sure that it is understood and loved. The standard repertoire also needs to be played and cultivated, of course, but beyond that there is a whole cosmos to discover, so many composers who deserve to be heard, who urgently need an audience, feedback, not least to continue on this beautiful, difficult and often very lonely path. It's not easy to be born into this world as a composer, I'm relatively sure of that. The possible posthumous fame, which we pianists are unlikely to be granted, is certainly only small consolation.