The Le Beau Ensemble is made up of five female musicians: Henrike von Heimburg (piano), Nadia Steinhardt (mezzo-soprano), Ruth Gierten-Hollingshaus (violin), Liese Mészár (viola) and Trude Mészár (cello). The musicians first met before and during their studies at the Saar Academy of Music, where they already developed a close musical connection.

The Le Beau Ensemble is united not only by their passion for music, but also by a long friendship that is reflected in every performance. The ensemble thrills its audience with its variable instrumentation and empathetic playing, while also promoting the visibility of the composer Luise Adolpha Le Beau.

Even before the Le Beau Ensemble was founded in 2019, they had successfully performed together in various chamber music ensembles. The string players Ruth, Liese and Trude were active internationally for many years in the Kubus Quartett, while Nadia and Henrike fascinated audiences as an intense song duo. In addition, cellist Trude and pianist Henrike performed as the Pelion Duo for several years, delighting their audiences with their harmonious interplay.

Since its inception, the Le Beau Ensemble has given numerous concerts and currently performs exclusively the works of Luise A. Le Beau in various instrumentations. In 2023, the ensemble was honoured with the Zonta Women Musicians Award, in recognition of its outstanding musical achievements and commitment.

In the 19th century, the desire to become a composer was considered an affront to social norms and female virtues. Nevertheless, a number of talented female musicians did not let themselves be deterred. Luise Adolpha Le Beau is one of them, titled by Luise Hitz in the Deutsche Frauenblättern in 1886 as ‘The first outstanding female composer in Germany’. Le Beau’s musical talent was fostered early on; she took piano lessons from Clara Schumann, among others, and received references from Hermann Levi and Hans von Bülow. The latter sent her to Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger, the sought-after composition teacher at the Royal Bavarian School of Music in Munich, with a letter of recommendation. But he could only be persuaded to do so after the composition of her Violin Sonata Op. 10, and only for private lessons: ‘Masculine, not as if made by a lady’ was his judgement. This metaphor of the ‘masculine spirit’ haunted many of the nearly 300 reviews collected by Le Beau.

Le Beau left more than 65 opus-numbered compositions in almost all genres: songs, choral music, piano pieces, chamber music, symphonic works, a piano concerto, two oratorios and the fairy-tale opera Der verzauberte Kalif (‘The Enchanted Caliph’). After this was taken off the programme of the Karlsruhe Opera House after it had already been approved, she published her Lebenserinnerungen einer Komponistin (‘Memoirs of a Woman Composer’) in 1910 with the aim of making prejudices against female composers public. It is a sharp pamphlet in which she relentlessly takes her colleagues to court, but in which she also provides an interesting account of the concert and music life of her time.

In purely numerical terms, vocal compositions make up the most representative genre in her oeuvre, with a total of 26 song cycles, 61 songs and 22 choral pieces. Almost all of them were published during the composer’s lifetime.