Ernst Boehe

Ernst Adolf Boehe (born December 27, 1880 in Munich , † November 16, 1938 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein ) was a German conductor and composer .

Ernst Boehe (around 1907)

Life

Boehe came from a Bavarian officer family. As a high school student he took lessons in harmony and counterpoint from Rudolf Louis and piano from Josef Pembaur . From 1900 he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in Munich, where he was taught by Ludwig Thuille (composition) and Heinrich Schwartz (piano). From 1907 he conducted the folk symphony concerts of the Kaim Orchestra in Munich (later the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra ) together with Walter Courvoisier and took over the Oldenburg court orchestra from 1913 to 1920 . He owed his appointment as successor to Ferdinand Manns in Oldenburg in 1913 to a recommendation by the then very well-known Stuttgart composer and general music director Max von Schillings . Boehe succeeded in giving Oldenburg musical life new impetus after a certain decline that it had to experience at the beginning of the 20th century. With two innovations, he brought the Oldenburg audience closer to the orchestra than before: he made the dress rehearsals public and set up a special series of concerts under the title Folk Concerts . The musical highlight of his work in Oldenburg was in the last few years of his activity there. He made Oldenburg more familiar with the then modern compositions by Bruckner , Richard Strauss and others. In 1917 he was honored with the title of professor and in 1919 received the title of general music director . He moved to Ludwigshafen in 1920 and worked there until his death in 1938 as general music director of the Palatinate Orchestra in Ludwigshafen am Rhein (today's State Philharmonic of Rhineland-Palatinate ).

Boehe's first compositions were written during his high school years and appeared in print from 1900, For example, the songs op. 1 and the song cycle Deep Shadow, op. 2. The focus of Boehes œuvre are programmatic orchestral works that are classified as symphonic poetry , especially the huge four-part cycle From Odysseus' Journeys, op. 6, its individual parts (“Exit and Shipwreck” op.6,1; “Insel der Kirke” op.6,2; “The Lament of Nausicaa” op.6,3 and “Odysseus Heimkehr” op.6,4) from the Munich Music Academy and the Kaimorchester in 1903–05, and later by many other orchestras. At the Tonkünstlerversammlung in June 1903 in Basel, the entire cycle achieved an “enthusiastic success” (NZsfM p.383), which made the composer well known. His other orchestral works Taormina, Op. 9, Tragic Overture, Op. 10, and Symphonic Epilog, Op. 11 were still heard in the years before 1910. They are located in the area of ​​the New German School and show influences from Richard Strauss and Max von Schillings , with which Boehe was friends. At the age of 30 he largely ended his activity as a composer and concentrated on his thoroughly successful conducting career.

literature

• Ernst Boehe. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 80-81 ( online ).
• Gottfried Heinz: Biographical information in the CD booklet cpo 999 875-2 (Boehe: Tragic Overture etc., State Philharmonic Rhineland-Palatinate, headed by Werner Andreas Albert, 2002)
• Short biography of Ernst Boehe in NZsfM 1909 p.159 (14 lines)