Georg Kulenkampff

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Alwin Georg Kulenkampff-Post (born January 23, 1898 in Bremen , † October 4, 1948 in Schaffhausen , Switzerland ) was one of the most famous German violin virtuosos of the 1930s and 1940s.

Life

Georg's grandfather, Julius Eberhard Kulenkampff (1818-1884), married Anna Gertrud Post for the third time on June 1, 1865. To prevent confusion with the half-brothers, Georg's father was given the name Hermann Julius Kulenkampff-Post when he was born on December 17, 1866. Georg dropped his father's double name after 1914.

Kulenkampff had been a student of Ernst Wendel , head of the Bremen Philharmonic , since 1904 . He made his debut in 1912 as a solo violinist, studied with Willy Hess at the Berlin Conservatory and was concertmaster of the university orchestra. In 1916 the tall and slim Kulenkampff became first concertmaster of the Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra , and in 1923 lecturer at the Berlin University of Music. In addition to his solo activity, Kulenkampff taught at the Berlin University of Music from 1923 to 1926 and from 1931 to 1943. Kulenkampff was very busy during the Nazi era. At the beginning of 1944 his health was so bad that his family doctor forbade him to go on concerts and recommended that he take a course in Davos for convalescence. His recovery made no progress. After his rented apartment in Potsdam was destroyed during the war, he only had his two violins and the sheet music.

In November 1944, Carl Flesch died unexpectedly . Although this Kulenkampff had proposed his future successor earlier, the Swiss authorities did not appoint him until May 1, 1945 as head of the summer masterclasses. His concert activities made only slow progress. In the summer of 1948, on the advice of his friend Wilhelm Furtwängler , he wanted to start a rejuvenation treatment with Paul Niehans in Lausanne . According to the autopsy report, he was given an extract from a contaminated bovine brain. Kulenkampff's son Caspar Kulenkampff said: “The autopsy I arranged revealed virus encephalitis in the area and on the floor of the fourth ventricle. There was no serious doubt that he had become infected from the injections. So my father died in a completely unnecessary accident. ”Shortly before that, on September 24, 1948 in Schaffhausen - already beginning to show signs of paralysis - he gave his last concert with three solo violin works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Kulenkampff died before accepting an offer at the University of Music Freiburg im Breisgau.

Robert Schumann's Violin Concerto

Clara Schumann gave Joseph Joachim the manuscript of Robert Schumann's Violin Concerto after his death. In his will, Joachim decreed that the work should not be performed until 100 years after the composer's death (1856) because, in Joachim's opinion, it already contained the shadows of Schumann's later mental illness. The manuscript was sold together with the estate of the violinist by his son Johannes Joachim to the archive of the Prussian State Library .

In 1937 Jelly d'Arányi - Joachim's great niece, who knew exactly what the concert and "Uncle Jo" was all about - wrote to the Schott publishing house in Mainz that the spirit of Robert Schumann had appeared to her at a spiritualistic meeting, and drew her attention to his forgotten violin concerto. However, through a publication by the head librarian of the music department of the Prussian State Library Hermann Wilhelm Springer (1872–1945), Schott had already become aware of the work. Its director Georg Schünemann reached an agreement with Joachim's heirs about an early performance. The intended soloist was 21-year-old Yehudi Menuhin , to whom the publisher had already sent a score. At the same time, Georg Kulenkampff was trying to get the performance rights to wrest the work from oblivion. Since the rights to the concert were in Germany, the National Socialist government decided that the world premiere could not take place abroad. With the help of Paul Hindemith , whose own works had already been banned by the National Socialists, and Georg Schünemann, Kulenkampff made a number of changes to make the concert more playable.

On November 26, 1937, more than 80 years after its creation, the violin concerto was premiered by Georg Kulenkampff and the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Karl Böhm .

Menuhin performed it at Carnegie Hall with piano accompaniment on December 6, 1937 and then with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Vladimir Golschmann on December 23. In Germany, Siegfried Borries followed suit with a version based on the autograph. In 1938 - almost a year after Georg Kulenkampff - Eugenia Umiska played the Polish premiere.

Jelly d'Aranyi had made the London premiere with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1938 , although her performance was apparently not universally hailed as a success. The critic Robert Elkin remarked: "The less is said about this gloomy fiasco, the better." Although the Schumann Concerto was still often performed by Kulenkampff and had staunch supporters in Yehudi Menuhin and especially in Henryk Szeryng , it lasted for a long time Do not enforce time in concert operations.

Act

When Kulenkampff dared to perform Hindemith's violin sonata in Berlin in 1936, the success was so great that the Nazis reacted with an official ban on Hindemith's music. Completely unaffected by the regulations of the National Socialists, he continued to play the cadences in the classical works, which came from “non-Aryan” artists such as Joseph Joachim or Fritz Kreisler .

Kulenkampff played numerous world premieres and premieres, u. a. of works by Ottorino Respighi (2nd violin sonata) and Jean Sibelius . In a duo with piano he played with Wilhelm Kempff , Sebastian Peschko and Georg Solti , Wolfgang Rosé, Siegfried Schultze, and from 1944 he was the first violinist of the Kulenkampff Quartet .

In 1940 he moved to Potsdam. From this period comes his recording of the Violin Concerto by Max Bruch and a live recording of Sibelius' Violin Concerto , the Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted.

After the war he made recordings in 1948 with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra of Glazunov's Violin Concerto.

From 1935 to 1948, Kulenkampff also played in the famous piano trio Fischer / Kulenkampff / Mainardi, together with Edwin Fischer (piano) and Enrico Mainardi (cello). After Kulenkampff's death, Wolfgang Schneiderhan took up the violin there until 1959.

Records left by Kulenkampff were published in 1952 by Gerhard Meyer-Sichting under the title "Geigerische Considerungen", thanks to the support of Caspar Kulenkampff (son), Frankfurt, and Otto Hoffmann (father-in-law), Lübeck. GM-S .: "The writing is based on the study of the notes and recordings in the archive and on conversations with Georg Kulenkampff."

Discography

Kulenkampff's recordings are largely available from PODIUM publishers, currently on 14 CDs with extensive documentation. In Vol. 10 and 11, Kulenkampffs / Meyer viewings “Geigerische Considerungen” are published again.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Descendants of Julius Eberhard Kulenkampff ; Rodovid, last accessed November 26, 2012.
  2. ↑ Eveline Bartlitz : "... His always ready pen never stood still" ( Wilhelm Altmann on his 150th birthday). In: Forum music library. Year 2012, Issue 1, p. 33.
  3. ↑ Joachim W. Hartnack: Great violinists of our time . Atlantis Musikbuch-Verlag, Zurich 1977; ISBN 3-7611-0527-4 ; Page 146
  4. ↑ Bruce Eder: Georg Kulenkampff biography ; at allmusic, last accessed on November 26, 2012
  5. ^ Ulrich Möller-Arnsberg: Robert Schumann: Violin Concerto ( Memento of December 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ); Bayerischer Rundfunk, April 5, 2008
  6. ↑ P2 Arkiv Klassiskt: Kulenkampff, Fröier och Saedén ; Sverige Radio, November 7, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Kulenkampff, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kulenkampff-Post, Alwin Georg (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German violinist
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH October 4, 1948
Place of death Schaffhausen , Switzerland