10/11/2023 0 Comments Romantic cello repertoire![]() On numerous occasions Pfitzner invited Hitler to his concerts but was constantly rebuffed, or he was thwarted in attempts to fix face-to-face meetings. The composer thought their brief encounter in 1923 had been quite successful, so he was devasted to have an invitation to conduct the music for the 1934 Nuremberg Rally withdrawn, on the grounds that Hitler was convinced that Pfitzner had Jewish blood. ![]() Poor Pfitzner: on the one hand he shared, or at least sympathized with, many of the beliefs of the Nazis (and the term ‘old rabbi’ was subsequently used by some of his detractors with the bitterest irony) on the other, Hitler himself-despite constant correction by Goebbels and others-remained convinced that Pfitzner was partly Jewish. Michael Kater (in The Twisted Muse) has written that afterwards Hitler told his companion, the poet Dieter Eckart, that he ‘did not want anything to do with this old rabbi-evidently mistaking the bearded Pfitzner for a Jew’. It did nothing for Pfitzner’s short-term career aspirations-but ultimately helped to salvage something of his reputation-that he unwittingly enraged Hitler at this meeting and that Hitler didn’t care for his music either. In 1923 Pfitzner was in hospital in Munich for a gall bladder operation and one of his visitors was Adolf Hitler. Walter’s reference to ‘grim events’ is an uncomfortable but essential reminder of Pfitzner’s beliefs and his nationalist politics. The work has all the elements of imperishability.’ He had an increasingly difficult relationship with Bruno Walter during the Nazi years, but in what turned out to be his last letter (16 February 1962-the day before he died), Walter wrote to Pfitzner’s widow Mali declaring that: ‘Despite all the grim events of our times, I’m confident that Palestrina will “endure”. It is this work that has kept Pfitzner’s name in the repertoire, especially in German-speaking countries. It’s as an operatic composer that Pfitzner is best remembered, above all through Palestrina (originally subtitled a ‘Musical Legend’), first performed by the Munich Opera at the city’s Prinzregententheater under Bruno Walter in 1917. This work left a lasting mark on Pfitzner whose own Das Christ-Elflein (first version, 1906 revised version, 1917) owes a good deal to the magical world of Humperdinck’s score. Soon after graduating in 1890, Pfitzner volunteered-along with his classmate Carl Friedberg-to copy out the orchestral parts for the latest work by another composition teacher at the Hoch Konservatorium: Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, first performed in Weimar on 23 December 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss. Robert Pfitzner took up a position as leader (concert master) of the orchestra in the Stadttheater.Īs a student at the Hoch Konservatorium in Frankfurt, the young Pfitzner studied piano with James Kwast (also the teacher of Otto Klemperer and Percy Grainger) and composition with Iwan Knorr, whose pupils included not only several other German composers (Walter Braunfels, Ernst Toch, Oskar Fried), but also the so-called Frankfurt School of British composers (among them Roger Quilter, Cyril Scott, Balfour Gardiner and Norman O’Neill), and the Geneva-born Ernest Bloch. ![]() His father Robert was working there as a violinist in a theatre orchestra, though the family returned to Frankfurt am Main in 1872, and this is the city Pfitzner always considered to be his home town. It’s an amusing quirk of history that Hans Pfitzner, one of the most ardently nationalistic German composers of his generation, was born in Moscow, on. Also included is a Duo for violin, cello and small orchestra. It was completed in 1943 and published in 1944. The Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 52, is dedicated to Ludwig Hoelscher (1907–1996), a pupil of two giants of German cello-playing: Hugo Becker and Julius Klengel. The orchestration is deft and often delicate, never submerging the solo instrument, but full of attractive surprises, not least the tumbling trumpet fanfares that introduce the first of the faster sections. This beautifully constructed concerto derives its material from the lyrical cello solo (heard over a quiet timpani roll) at the very start of the work. Completed in 1935, this richly melodic single span was composed for the cellist Gaspar Cassadó (1897–1966), one of the finest cellists of his generation. His Cello Concerto in G major, Op 42, was written almost half a century later. It was first performed in public on 18 February 1977 and published the following year. Pfitzner’s early Cello Concerto in A minor, Op posth., was scorned by his teachers (although liked by the composer himself) and the manuscript disappeared during his lifetime. ![]() Alban Gerhardt performs the three concertos by Hans Pfitzner, a composer remembered most for his opera Palestrina. Hyperion’s Romantic Cello Concerto series continues to bring new works into a repertoire currently dominated by Dvořák and Elgar.
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