Irene Scharrer was an English classical pianist.

Irene Scharrer was born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and studied at the Royal Academy of Music

Royal Academy of Music

The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...

 with Tobias Matthay

Tobias Matthay

Tobias Augustus Matthay was an English pianist, teacher, and composer.-Biography:Matthaw as born in London in 1858 to parents who had come from northern Germany and were naturalised British subjects...

.

Scharrer made her London début at the age of 16, and gave concerts regularly until June 1958, where she appeared for the last time, playing Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos with Myra Hess

Myra Hess

Dame Myra Hess DBE was a British pianist.She was born in London as Julia Myra Hess, but was best known by her middle name. At the age of five she began to study the piano and two years later entered the Guildhall School of Music, where she graduated as winner of the Gold Medal...

. They often performed four-handed compositions together. (Scharrer is sometimes erroneously described as Hess's cousin. She was distantly related to another fine woman pianist, Harriet Cohen

Harriet Cohen

Harriet Cohen CBE was a British pianist.-Biography:Harriet Cohen was born in London and studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music under Tobias Matthay, having won the Ada Lewis scholarship at the age of 12. She made her debut at a Chappell's Sunday concert at the Queen's Hall a year later...

, the two sharing a great-great-grandfather).

Other collaborators included Arthur Nikisch

Arthur Nikisch

Arthur Nikisch ; 12 October 185523 January 1922) was a Hungarian conductor who performed internationally, holding posts in Boston, London and - most importantly - Berlin. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Liszt...

 in Berlin, and Landon Ronald

Landon Ronald

Sir Landon Ronald was an English conductor, composer, pianist, singing teacher and administrator...

 in London.

She visited Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...

 in 1918 and was promised the first performance of his piano concerto, then being sketched.

Her technique was one of refinement rather than power. Her surviving recordings show her at her best in the smaller pieces of the romantic repertoire, where her impeccable control, fine tone and lack of showiness serve the music well.

Recordings

A selection of reissues is commercially available.

From as early as 1909 she recorded for HMV

HMV

His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...

, then between 1929 and the mid 1930s for Columbia

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

. Recorded repertoire included:

Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

Prelude and Fugue (HMVD576)

Chopin

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

Prelude in F-sharp minor;
Waltz in E minor (HMV E255);
Fantaisie-Impromptu;
Impromptu in A-flat (HMV D1087);
Study in B-flat (HMV D1303)

Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...

Allegro Scherzando from Piano Concerto in G (HMV D81)

Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

Intermezzo in E-flat (HMV D87)

Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

Rondo Capricioso (HMV D87);
The Bees' Wedding (HMV D1303)

Sinding

Christian Sinding

Christian August Sinding was a Norwegian composer.-Personal life:He was born in Kongsberg as a son of mine superindendent Matthias Wilhelm Sinding and Cecilie Marie Mejdell . He was a brother of the painter Otto Sinding and the sculptor Stephan Sinding...

Rustle of Spring (HMV D1087)

Debussy

Claude Debussy

Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

Poissons d'or;
Reflets dans l'eau

Reflets dans l'eau

Claude Debussy's piece Reflets dans l'eau is the first of three pieces for the piano from his first volume of Images, which are frequently performed separately. It was written in 1905...

(HMV D914)
Arabesque No. 2 (HMV D576)