George Alexander Albrecht

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George Alexander Albrecht (born February 15, 1935 in Leuchtenburg , Osterholz district , † December 21, 2021 ) was a German conductor and composer .

Life

Albrecht - son of the doctor Carl Albrecht - was a great-great-grandson of the Bremen merchant Baron Ludwig Knoop , younger brother of the politician Ernst Albrecht and father of the conductor Marc Albrecht and the uncle of the politician Ursula von der Leyen . His American grandmother Mary Ladson Robertson (1883-1960) from Charleston was a descendant of the politician James Ladson and the plantation owner and businessman James H. Ladson .

He studied violin , piano and composition and received the “Prix d'excellence” of the Accademia Chigiana in Siena , Italy in 1954 . After positions at the Bremen Theater am Goetheplatz (1958–1961) and at the Landestheater Hanover (1961–1965), he was appointed General Music Director of the Lower Saxony State Opera in Hanover in 1965 at the age of 29 and was then the youngest General Music Director in Germany. In the course of his career he was a. Guest conductor of the Berlin , Bamberg and Munich Philharmonic Orchestra , the Dresden State Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra . He has conducted all German radio orchestras and has conducted numerous foreign orchestras, including the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Orchester Philharmonique de Paris , the Czech Philharmonic and the Turin, Milan and Rome radio orchestras. Opera and concert guest appearances have taken him to Bologna, Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Trieste, Turin, Venice, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic , the Zurich Opera House , the Vienna State Opera , the Vienna Konzerthaus and the Vienna Musikverein , the Salzburg Festival and Carnegie Hall in New York. In February 1992 he made his debut in Japan with the Tokyo NHK Symphony Orchestra . After 32 years, Albrecht left the Hanover Opera at the end of the 1992/93 season to increasingly devote himself to guest conducting.

Guest performances

From 1990 to 1995 Albrecht was guest conductor at the Semperoper Dresden and in 1994 directed the new production of the opera Moses und Aron by Arnold Schönberg in Leipzig . He held an honorary professorship at the Liszt School of Music Weimar . His students include the conductors Volkher Häusler and Michael Mader .

As general music director of the German National Theater Weimar and the Staatskapelle Weimar , he has been touring tours since 1996, among others. to Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Vienna, Salzburg, Antwerp, Luxembourg and Japan.

On one of his last guest tours (autumn 2004) he conducted the Staatskapelle Weimar with Wilhelm Furtwängler's Symphonic Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and Beethoven's 5th Symphony in Germany and Austria. His CD recordings with this traditional German orchestra focus particularly on works by Liszt, Wagner, Strauss and Humperdinck written for Weimar.

Particular highlights among the numerous guest appearances that Albrecht undertook were conducting Antonín Dvořák's Stabat Mater with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the New Zealand International Festival and the rehearsal of Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman at Opera Australia in the 2003/2004 season Sydney and Melbourne. For the latter project, he received the Conductors Award in the opera category from the Australian critic's Green Room Award in 2005 .

Artistic importance

Albrecht's opera and concert repertoire was broad. New music was a focal point , as evidenced by numerous world premieres and exemplary rehearsals (e.g. Aribert Reimann's Troades , Bernd Alois Zimmermann's The Soldiers , Schönberg's Moses and Aron ).

In addition to the music-dramatic works of Mozart and Wagner , the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler formed a further focus in Albrecht's work. Among other things, he received the Gustav Mahler Gold Medal of the International Gustav Mahler Society for his performance of Mahler's complete works in 1985 and wrote the extensive work The Symphonies of Gustav Mahler . Again and again he advocates rarely performed works such as B. by Hans Pfitzner , about whom he also conducted scientific research and wrote the study Das Sinfonische Werk Pfitzner , Erwin Schulhoff , Allan Pettersson and, last but not least, Wilhelm Furtwängler , whose symphonies he edited as president of the Wilhelm Furtwängler Complete Edition . Three CDs with all of Furtwängler's symphonies have been released with the Staatskapelle Weimar .

composer

George Alexander Albrecht wrote his first composition, a song, at the age of eleven in October 1946. By his early twenties he had already written over a hundred works. Since a cardiac arrest while conducting in 2002, he turned back to composing. In June 2018 his Requiem for Syria was premiered in Dresden ( Dresden Philharmonic under the direction of Michael Sanderling ). A year later, in August 2019, his 1st symphony, Sinfonia due Mondi for mezzo-soprano and large orchestra , was premiered on texts by Ulla Hahn ( Staatskapelle Weimar , conductor: Marc Albrecht ).

Voluntary work

Albrecht got involved in hospice work .

honors and awards

Fonts

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mourning in Weimar: Honorary conductor George Alexander Albrecht is dead. In: mdr.de , December 22, 2021, accessed on December 22, 2021
  2. ↑ German Gender Book , Vol. 187, p. 43.
  3. ^ Register of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of South Carolina, p. 35, The Society, 1945.
  4. ↑ Redaktionsbüro Harenberg: Knaurs Prominentenlexikon 1980. The personal data of celebrities from politics, economy, culture and society. With over 400 photos. Droemer Knaur, Munich / Zurich 1979, ISBN 3-426-07604-7 , Albrecht, George Alexander, p. 13 .
  5. ^ The symphonies of Gustav Mahler. An introduction. "What attracts us with mystical violence ..." Niemeyer, Hameln 1992, ISBN 3-87585-241-9 (with a CD).
  6. ↑ a b George Alexander ALBRECHT: "My whole inner path leads to Mahler". Retrieved November 2, 2021 .
  7. ↑ On the world premiere of George Alexander Albrecht's “Requiem for Syria” in Dresden | nmz - new music newspaper. Retrieved November 2, 2021 .
  8. ↑ The sound of the world or the courage to please - season opener of the Staatskapelle Weimar | nmz - new music newspaper. Retrieved November 2, 2021 .
  9. ↑ In the face of death, people become clairvoyant and wise ( Memento from August 21, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). In: Central German Church Newspapers, March 13, 2011
  10. ↑ Information from the Order's Chancellery in the Office of the Federal President.
personal data
SURNAME Albrecht, George Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor
BIRTH DATE February 15, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Leuchtenburg
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 2021