Alfred Hoehn

Alfred Hoehn in 1909, at the time of his first European tour.

Alfred Hoehn (born October 20, 1887 in Oberellen , † August 2, 1945 in Königstein im Taunus ) was a German pianist , composer, piano teacher and editor .

Live and act

Hoehn was the son of a teacher and organist. He was supported by the pianist Eugen d'Albert , the conductor Fritz Steinbach , Kapellmeister of the Meiningen court orchestra , and Duke Georg II of Saxony-Meiningen , who campaigned for his music studies. Hoehn learned the basics of piano playing from his father and went to Frankfurt am Main in 1900, where he became a student at the Hoch Conservatory at the same time as attending the secondary school . He received his pianistic training from Lazzaro Uzielli , a student of Clara Schumann .

After completing his piano training in 1908, he studied with Fritz Steinbach , who in the meantime had accepted the position of general music director in Cologne and professor at the music conservatory there. In 1908 he introduced Hoehn to the career of the concert pianist. In addition, studies were carried out with Eugen d'Albert and Ferruccio Busoni .

After his European tour in 1909, Hoehn won the Anton Rubinstein Prize in St. Petersburg in 1910, ahead of Arthur Rubinstein , who reported extensively on this competition in his memoirs and said that Hoehn had actually deserved 1st prize.

Also in 1910, Hoehn was appointed court pianist by the Duke of Meiningen.

As early as 1907 he received a teaching position at the Hoch Conservatory from director Iwan Knorr , which he carried out until 1916 and then ended at his own request. In 1913 he took over a master class at the Conservatory in Strasbourg led by Hans Pfitzner . In 1929 Hoehn again became a teacher at the Hoch Conservatory and after its partial reorganization into the Frankfurt University of Music in 1938, he was professor and head of the master class. In the same position, he had been working at the Weimar University of Music since 1933 as the successor to Bruno Hinze-Reinhold .

Hoehn's career came to an end in the spring of 1940 when he suffered a stroke during rehearsal for Brahms' 2nd piano concerto in the Leipzig Gewandhaus . As a result, he was paralyzed and died after a long illness on August 2, 1945 in the Königstein hospital in the Taunus.

Hoehn's grave is in the cemetery in Kronberg im Taunus, his last place of residence. His estate is kept in the archive of the Liszt School of Music Weimar .

The pianist and teacher

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In addition to the activity of the traveling concert pianist, Hoehn had already devoted himself to educational tasks as a lecturer, private teacher and professor since his student years. Hoehn was not interested in the public dissemination of his ideas. This was especially true for the system of attack types he represented , which was only published after his death without consent given during his lifetime. Nothing is known about Hoehn's contribution to the origin and development of this practice method. His student Georg Roth is of the opinion that ideas flow together in Hoehn's system, which flowed through Hoehn's lessons with Lazzaro Uzielli and the suggestions of Eugen d'Albert and Ferruccio Busoni until the 19th century (Friedrich Wieck, Clara Schumann, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt).

The composer and editor

Alfred Hoehn published a large part of the piano sonatas and sonatinas as well as individual piano pieces and variations by Ludwig van Beethoven for Edition Schott . It is an original text that does not, however, meet today's standards. His fingering is in the tradition of older pianistics, as can be seen, for example, in the editions of Hans von Bülow , Eugen d'Albert, Ferruccio Busoni or Alfred Cortot . This means that the fingering primarily serves to help adequately portray the musical content of the work of art (articulation, phrasing) and that purely technical issues, such as making difficult passages easier with suitable fingerings or arrangements, are of secondary importance. Modern piano methodology takes a more liberal position here: partial elimination of the finger change for repeated notes, protection of the so-called weak fingers 4 and 5, if other solutions are possible, division of difficult passages between two hands and the use of the pedal as early as the fingering.

reception

Hoehn was u. a. Teacher of Erik Then-Bergh (1916–1982), Hans Rosbaud and Gisela Sott . Gisela Sott said about him:

“ Hoehn was a first class artist. He had it all - by heart, of course. He came to Hanover in 1933 with Brahms' D minor Concerto under Furtwängler . Until then, we were used to the concert in the somewhat relaxed manner of Fischer and the Ney , who had no technology at all. And now Hoehn came up with this aloof manner, and of course that was a shock. He could do everything without having practiced. But of course he practiced insanely. When he came home from a concert, he would still practice at night. And then he got the severe stroke. It happened in the course of the second movement of the first Brahms Concerto. Afterwards he told me that the keyboard kept rising. After that he was paralyzed on his right side and had to give up his long career. The man had won all international competitions. The Rubinstein competition, for example. And when Arthur Rubinstein already says how wonderfully he played the piano, then that means something. "

Audio documents

Broadcast recordings

• Johannes Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15 (Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Max Fiedler ). (Transferred to CD: Behind the notes: Brahms played by his colleagues and pupils . Arbiter Records 163).
• Johannes Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 86 (Leipzig Radio Orchestra, conductor: Reinhold Merten, recording: 1940). (Transferred to CD: Cultural Death: Music under Tyranny . Arbiter Records 162. Also on Apple Music).
• Peter Tchaikowsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23 (Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Wilhelm Buschkötter).
• Sergej Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 (conductor: Hans Rosbaud ).
• Max Reger: Piano Concerto in F minor, Op. 114 (Frankfurter Rundfunk-Symphonieorchester, conductor: Otto Frickhoeffer ).

Some of the recordings are in the holdings of the German Broadcasting Archive .

Recordings on piano rolls

Welte-Mignon system
(M. Welte & Sons, Freiburg im Breisgau)

• Johann Sebastian Bach: Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor BWV 903 (roll no. 3289, year: 1922).
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 4 in E flat major op.7 (roll no. 3290/3291, year: 1920).
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106 (roll number 3292/93/94, year: 1922).
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Variations and Fugue in E flat major op.35, part 1 (roll number 3296, year: 1920).
• Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Scherzo a capriccio in F sharp minor (roll no. 3375, year: 1920).
• Johannes Brahms: Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, op.5 (roll number 3297/98/99/3300, year: 1920).
• Johannes Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel in B flat major op.24 (R. 3301/02, 1920).
• Jean-Philippe Rameau: Gavotte with Variations in A minor (reel no. 3303, year: 1920).

Phonola
(Ludwig-Hupfeld AG, Leipzig)

• Frédéric Chopin: Nocturne in E minor op. 72/1 (88 Animatic, roll no. 50572).
• Frédéric Chopin: Variations on the theme of the rondo “Je vends des scapulaires” from the opera “Ludovic” by Hérold and Halévy in B flat major op. 12 (88 Animatic, roll no. 50476).
• Antonin Dvořák: Poetic Mood Pictures op. 85/12 “Am Heldengrabe” (88 Animatic, roll no. 50572).

Record recordings

• Frédéric Chopin: Barcarolle in F sharp major op. 60 (Parlophone E 10850, Odeon O 9108, American Decca 25177).
• Frédéric Chopin: 2 Etudes (op. 10/12 in C minor, “Revolutionary Etude”, op. 25/2 in F minor) (Parlophone E 10915, Parlophone A 4184, American Decca 25113).
• Domenico Scarlatti: Pastorale (L 413, arrangement: Carl Tausig) (Parlophone E 10915, American Decca 25113).

literature

• Georg Roth : Methodology of virtuoso piano playing. Alfred Hoehn's method. Breitkopf and Härtel. Leipzig, 1949, 2nd edition 1953; exp. Edition Florian Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 1995, ISBN 978-3-7959-0683-2 .
• Walter Niemann : master of the piano. The pianists of the present and the past . 8th edition. Schuster & Löffler, Berlin 1919.
• Hans W. Schmitz: Alfred Hoehn - an artist at the piano . In: The mechanical musical instrument . Society for self-playing musical instruments, Stuttgart. 13. Vol. 43 1987.
• Peter Seidle: Alfred Hoehn . In: Ingo Harden and Gregor Willmes with the assistance of Peter Seidle: Pianistenprofile . Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel 2008, ISBN 978-3-7618-1616-5 . Page 312–313.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred Hoehn in the bibliographic database WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ^ Artur Rubinstein: My young years . Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York 1973. German edition: Artur Rubinstein: "Memories. The early years". S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1973. Paperback edition: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-596-21676-1 , pages 406-410.
2. ↑ Wolfram Huschke: Future Music: A History of the Liszt School of Music Weimar . Böhlau Verlag Köln u. a. 2006, ISBN 978-3-412-30905-3 .
   Bruno Hinze-Reinhold: Memoirs . Edited by Michael Berg with a foreword by Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (= edition musik und wort der Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar, Volume 1). Universitätsverlag Weimar, Weimar 1997, ISBN 3-86068-069-2 , page 92.
3. ↑ http://www.giselasott.de/
   Corrections to the statements by Gisela Sott: 1. Hoehn has not won any other competition apart from the Rubinstein competition. 2. According to statements by his pupil Georg Roth, Alfred Hoehn suffered a stroke during a rehearsal for the 2nd (not the 1st) Brahms concert in the spring of 1940 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus . 3. Rubinstein's statement that Hoehn played the piano wonderfully is not substantiated.