Liberating Echoes Festival: Closing concert "Flowing Echoes – Forgotten Perspectives"

Liberating Echoes is a chamber music festival that explores the inseparable connection between music, art, and human freedom. It is a festival of remembrance, reflection, and transformation 80 years after the end of World War II.

The closing concert of the Liberating Echoes festival at Villa Elisabeth is not intended as a historical correction, but rather as a conscious expansion of musical horizons—an evening that allows the female perspective to be experienced not as an exception, but as a natural part of an open, diverse world of sound. The works of Fanny Hensel, Amy Beach, and Michaela Catranis represent independent compositional voices that open up spaces of inner freedom, formal clarity, and poetic power. In combination with Gabriel Fauré's finely illuminated piano quartet, it becomes audible: femininity in music is not a stylistic feature, but a question of perception – a dialogue carried by artistic autonomy, tonal intimacy, and resonance beyond attributions.

Michaela Catranis' Widening Circles (2025), inspired by Rilke's poem of the same name, unfolds as a wide-ranging sound space – music as a growing movement, as inner unfolding.

Amy Beach's late Piano Trio, Op. 150, surprises with its rhythmic vitality and delicate sound balance. As one of the first internationally recognized female composers in the USA, she wrote music with sophistication, depth, and stylistic independence.
Fanny Hensel's String Quartet in E-flat major, long mistakenly attributed to her brother Felix, is a work of artistic self-assertion – structurally bold, emotionally open, and unique in its time. Gabriel Fauré's Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor complements the program with quiet introspection and translucent emotionality – not as a contrast, but as a mirror of a polyphonic dialogue. The result is a shared sound space beyond roles – sensitive, open, and resonant.

Program: "Flowing Echoes – Forgotten Perspectives: Female Composers and New Resonances"

Michaela Catrani (*1989): Widening Circles (2025)
Amy Beach (1867–1944): Piano Trio Op. 150
Fanny Hensel (1805–1847): String Quartet in E-flat major
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924): Piano Quartet No. 2 in G minor, Op. 45

Performers:
Tobias Feldmann, violin
Lisa Jacobs, violin
Karolina Errera, viola
Andrei Ioniță, cello
Catalin Serban, piano

Tickets:
€26, reduced €18, free choice of seating online via Eventim light and at the box office.

Organizer:
Spielende Insel e.V. in cooperation with Kultur Büro Elisabeth

Graphic © Spielende Insel e.V.