Marie Soldat-Roeger (born in Graz ( Styria), March 25, 1863, died in Graz (Styria), September 30, 1955) was a

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

virtuoso active in

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

l and chamber music in the

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A pupil of violin master

Joseph Joachim Joseph Joachim (28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of t ...

, she was born 'Marie Soldat', but in 1889 married a lawyer named Roeger. While studying with Joachim at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, she won the

Mendelssohn Prize The Mendelssohn Scholarship (german: Mendelssohn-Stipendium) refers to two scholarships awarded in Germany and in the United Kingdom. Both commemorate the composer Felix Mendelssohn, and are awarded to promising young musicians to enable them to co ...

in 1880. Marie Soldat-Roeger became friends with Marie Baumayer, an Austrian pianist, Baumayer was friends with Clara Wittingstein (part of the important Wittgenstein family) and Johannes Brahms. The latter introduced her to

, who trained her in violin. For many years, she was the only woman to play Brahms's Violin Concerto. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, she formed an all-female string quartet, in which she played first violin. Agnes Tschetschulin played second violin, Gabriele Roy played viola and Lucy Hebert Campbell played cello. The group toured and was managed by the Herman Wolff Agency, which also managed the Berlin Philharmonic. The group was billed as the world's first all-female professional string quartet. In 1896, she founded the celebrated, all-female Soldat-Roeger Quartet, whose viola-player was

Natalie Bauer-Lechner Natalie atalia Anna JulianaBauer-Lechner (Penzing, Vienna, 9 May 1858 – Vienna, 8 June 1921) was an Austrian violist who is best known to musicology for having been a close and devoted friend of Gustav Mahler in the period between 1890 and the ...

, Elsa Edle von Plank as second violinist (replacing Ella Finger-Bailetti in 1898), and Leontine Gärtner as cellist (replacing Lucy Herbert Campbell in 1903). This quartet would perform at '' Soirées musicales'' presenting modern music.

References

Further reading