Laura Netzel

Laura Constance Netzel (née Pistolekors; 1 March 1839 — 10 February 1927) was a Finnish-born Swedish composer, pianist, conductor and concert organizer who sometimes used the pseudonym N.

[2] Netzel studied piano with Mauritz Gisiko and Anton Door, voice with Julius Günther and composition with Wilhelm Heinze in Stockholm and Charles-Marie Widor in France.

For many years Laura Netzel, motivated by her strong faith, organized and conducted popular concerts and social events in Stockholm, which raised large sums of money for charitable works in support of women, children and the poor.

For the working class she organized concerts according to the British ideal of educating workers in Art music and providing them with a similar alternative to popular culture, such as variety shows.

Her most ambitious work, with the greatest musical resources and the longest duration, was Stabat Mater for soloists, mixed choir and organ, later with orchestra in her own adaptation.

In August 2021 they organized a Laura Netzel Music Festival in Rantasalmi where her songs, instrumental pieces and orchestral works were performed in a series of concerts.

[8] An intense, high-Romantic, Lisztian work with a currency of grand rhetorical gestures and occasional moments of searching lyricism, it was reconstructed by the pianist Peter Friis Johansson who has since recorded it on the BIS label.