Marie Jaëll

Dante

Marie Jaëll’s Dante: Piano Cycle is a monumental masterwork of the piano repertoire, composed in 1894 after Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and now available in print as a complete edition for the first time. The cycle comprises 18 richly characterful piano pieces, divided into three parts: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Despite its overwhelming expressive power and striking modernity, the music of this composer, admired by both Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns, has remained mostly overlooked to this day. The music combines radical harmonies, evocative tone colours, ostinati, polyrhythms and an innovative formal conception, moving between fiery intensity, profound longing and transcendent serenity while forming a compelling and coherent whole. Edited by Eva Meitner, this edition is aimed at pianists of intermediate to advanced level and includes a detailed preface in French, German and English. It offers musicians and music lovers alike the opportunity to rediscover an extraordinary composer and restore a major, unjustly neglected work of the piano repertoire to today’s concert scene and the home.