Ernesto Mehlich

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Ernesto Mehlich , formerly Ernst Mehlich (born February 9, 1888 in Berlin ; † February 12, 1977 in São Paulo ) was a German-Brazilian conductor , pianist and composer . During the Weimar Republic he worked as a conductor in Breslau and as general music director in Baden-Baden . In 1933 he emigrated to Brazil , where he set up the municipal symphony orchestra in São Paulo.

Life

Until the First World War

Mehlich, who came from a free-thinker family, was noticed early on as being musically gifted. At the age of six he received piano lessons. Two years later he attended the Kayser Conservatory in Berlin. At the age of eleven, the Berliner Philharmoniker was allowed to conduct a work by Joseph Haydn at a youth concert . In 1904 he received a Bayreuth scholarship at the suggestion of Cosima Wagner .

From 1904 to 1910 Mehlich studied conducting and composition with Max Bruch , Karl Heinrich Barth and Robert Kahn at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin . At the same time he studied musicology at the University of Berlin with Hermann Kretzschmar .

In 1909 Mehlich became Kapellmeister in Detmold . Further stations took him to Koblenz , Osnabrück and Kiel . He performed his own compositions in 1911. From 1914 to 1918 he took part in the First World War as a volunteer .

During the Weimar Republic

After the war, Mehlich conducted the orchestras from Königsberg , Bautzen , Hagen and Stettin . In 1922 Heinz Tietjen brought him to the Breslau Opera as First Kapellmeister . In 1924 Mehlich also conducted the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1926, Mehlich moved to Baden-Baden as the city's music director , but initially traveled to the USA with the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a tour . In December 1927 he was appointed general music director and conductor of the Baden-Baden orchestra . He founded the German Chamber Music Days in Baden-Baden , in which Paul Hindemith , Igor Stravinsky and Carl Friedberg took part. Mehlich conducted, among other things, the world premiere of the Singspiel Mahagonny with Lotte Lenya on July 17, 1927, directed by Bertolt Brecht , a commissioned work by Kurt Weill for the Chamber Music Days and at the same time Weill's first collaboration with Brecht. After the Chamber Music Days in 1929 had led to a scandal over Brecht's and Hindemith's didactic piece , Mehlich founded the “Baden-Baden Classical Chamber Music Concert” together with Carl Flesch and Carl Friedberg.

In exile

In 1933 Mehlich was still under discussion as Leo Blech's successor at the Berlin State Opera . His contract in Baden-Baden was terminated by a local council resolution in October 1933 because of his “Jewish origin”. Most of his works fell victim to the book burning on May 10, 1933. Mehlich emigrated to Brazil in December 1933 , where he was commissioned in 1934 by the then management of the Cultura Artistica to put together the first municipal symphony orchestra for São Paulo. He also taught at the conservatory. But his situation in Brazil was not without its problems. In 1937 his contract with the Sociedad Cultura di Sao Paulo was not renewed. In 1940 he was excluded from the Sociedad Philharmonica de Sao Paulo , which he founded with patrons for political reasons , after he had re-translated Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony . Mehlich was dependent on private help and translated operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Wagner as well as oratorios by Georg Friedrich Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach into Portuguese .

After the Second World War, Mehlich worked as a guest conductor in various European cities. In 1950 he gave a concert as a pianist in the Kurhaus Baden-Baden . Shortly before his death, he conducted again in Baden-Baden.

In Sao Paulo a street is named after Maestro Ernesto Mehlich .

Works

  • Two interludes. Reibenstein, Berlin 1909.
  • Romantic waltzes for piano, op.3. R. Reibenstein, Berlin 1910.
  • Four poems by Theodor Storm. For a voice with piano; op. 2. Reibenstein, Berlin 1910.
  • Three poems by Goethe. For a voice with piano: Op. 5. Reibenstein, Berlin-Gr. Lichterfelde 1911.
  • Fantasy variations on your own theme. Reibenstein, Berlin 1911.
  • Minuet. Op. 4, No. 1. Reibenstein, Berlin-Gr.-Lichterfelde-W 1912.
  • Brazilian folklore. In: Melos: Yearbook for Contemporary Music. 17, No. 5 1950, pp. 136-141.

literature

  • Carolina Bresslau Aust: musician, painter, graphic artist, poet, writer and journalist. A report on German emigration to Brazil between 1933 and 1946. In: Staden-Jahrbuch 41 (1993), pp. 54-93.
  • Albrecht Dümling and Peter Girth: Degenerate Music. Documentation and commentary on the Düsseldorf exhibition of 1938. 3rd edition. Dkv. the small publishing house, Düsseldorf 1993, ISBN 9783924166298 .
  • Habakuk Traber and Elmar Weingarten: Repressed music. Berlin composer in exile. Argon, Berlin 1987, ISBN 9783870241186 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Fuegi: Bertolt Brecht. Chaos, according to plan. Cambridge Univ. Pr, Cambridge 1987, ISBN 0521282454 , p. 192.
  2. ↑ Achim Reimer: City between two democracies. Baden-Baden from 1930 to 1950. M Press, Munich 2005, ISBN 9783899750454 , p. 47.
  3. ↑ Bresslau Aust, musician , p. 60.
personal data
SURNAME Maybe, Ernesto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mehlich, Ernst; Gagnier, Paul (pseudonym); Gagnier, Claude (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Brazilian conductor, composer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 2nd February 1977
Place of death São Paulo