Pianistic walk through Dante's world
Viviane Goergen has not only recorded Marie Jaëll's concert pieces on Dante's «Divine Comedy», but has also recorded her insights into them in a book and CD.
Together with premiere recordings of pieces by Marguerite Roesgen-Champion, Otilie Suková-Dvořáková, Stephanie Zaranek and Vera Winogradowa, the Paris-born, Germany-based Luxembourgish-Swiss performer and music teacher Viviane Goergen recorded her pioneering CD Pianistic miniatures by female composers (ARS 38 559) also includes the Valses Mignonnes by Marie Jaëll-Trautmann (1846-1925). (Review by Daniel Lienhard)
Monumental concert pieces
Her intensive study of the Alsatian, who was trained by César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns and married the Austrian pianist Alfred Jaëll, led to a CD dedicated to her alone. Behind the inconspicuous title Pièces pour piano (Hänssler Classics HC 24004) conceals three large-scale trouvailles of program-inspired piano literature: on Dante's Divine comedy The work is based on monumental concert pieces of strong individuality, each consisting of the six-part movements «Ce qu'on entend dans l'enfer, dans le purgatoire et dans le paradis» (1894). 
With her ostinato Dies Irae quotations in the Scenes from Hell and other motif repetitions, as well as the measures of five in the depiction of Paradise, the composer, who was a friend of Liszt and also emerged as a musicologist, went her own way, pointing far into the future. The pianist, who mentors young musicians on the basis of mental training and created a «Center for Music and Constructive Thinking» as early as 1994, exploits the philosophically profound content of the pieces with convincing intensity.
To mark the centenary of Marie Jaëll's death, Viviane Goergen has now published her insights into this trilogy in a book with an accompanying CD. In German, French and English and with illustrations from Dalí's Divine comedy individual episodes such as «Dans les flammes», «Sabbat», «Désirs impuissants», «Obsession» or «Voix célestes» are described very vividly using 38 musical examples. 
Viviane Goergen: Marie Jaëll - «Pièces pour Piano» and Dante's Divine Comedy, 212 p., with CD, € 59.50, Edition Signum Winfried Heid, Heidelberg 2025, ISBN 978-3-9817062-3-9
