Marie Soldat-Roeger

Marie Soldat-Roeger (born in Graz (Styria), March 25, 1863, died in Graz (Styria), September 30, 1955) was a violin virtuoso active in orchestral and chamber music in the Vienna of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A pupil of violin master Joseph Joachim, 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 in 1880.[1][2]

Marie Soldat-Roeger was discovered by Brahms when she was a girl of 15; for many years she was the only woman to play his 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 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.[3]

In 1895 she founded the celebrated, all-female Soldat-Roeger Quartet, whose viola-player was Natalie Bauer-Lechner.