Mitzi Meyerson was born into a musical family in Chicago, where she began her concert career at the age of seven. After completing her university and graduate studies in Chicago and Oberlin, she moved to London to co-found the ensemble Trio Sonnerie (with Monica Huggett and Sarah Cunningham), with whom she performed and recorded extensively.
Mitzi Meyerson has released over fifty recordings, among them solo albums of Buxtehude, Duphly, the complete works of Forqueray and JKF Fischer, all to excellent critical acclaim. Her recent releases include two double-CD sets for Glossa of music by Georg Böhm and Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (and both productions were awarded the prestigious Deutsche Schallplattenkritik prize in Germany for the best recordings of the year on an international level). She also released a solo recital of mixed repertoire for the Musikinstrumenten Museum in Berlin, four complete Ordres from the 4th Book of François Couperin (Les Ombres Errantes, again for Glossa), as well as a collaboration with Nigel Kennedy and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (EMI). Currently Mitzi Meyerson is preparing another double-CD set for Glossa, this time with music by Theofilo Muffat.
In addition to her solo work, Mitzi Meyerson is the founder of The Bottom Line, a variable ensemble devoted to repertoire for bass and continuo instruments, which appears in major festivals across Europe. The most popular form of The Bottom Line is the Berliner Cembalo Ensemble, a group of three to five harpsichords, which has a continually growing repertoire. She is full Professor of Harpsichord at the Universität der Künste in Berlin; this was the very first university to offer the study of the harpsichord, a position created especially for Wanda Landowska. Mitzi Meyerson specializes in working with modern pianists to obtain a baroque-style perspective in the performance of Bach, developing an awareness of articulation, harmonic structure, and many other aspects.
Mitzi Meyerson divides her time between a busy teaching schedule and many concert engagements throughout the world. Mitzi Meyerson’s other interests include photography (she has presented several exhibitions in Germany and England), social work (she volunteers in a birth clinic as a doula), sumo wrestling, and her beautiful Persian cat, Yofi.
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...]
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...]
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...]
Mitzi Meyerson signals her return on Glossa with a further example of her ability to seek out entertaining music that for too long has been ignored and perform it with all the subtlety, charm and musical skill that such music demands. For her new Glossa release she presents a demonstration of the compositional joys provided by one of the lesser-known French keyboard masters – Claude-Bénigne Balbastre. In her substantial discography there are already recordings given over to other bypassed talents such as Jacques Duphly, Georg Böhm, Antoine Forqueray and even the Fourth Book of François Couperin. [read more...]