Hans Rosbaud

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Hans Rosbaud conducts the WDR Symphony Orchestra , 1954

Hans Rosbaud (born July 22, 1895 in Graz , Austria-Hungary ; † December 29, 1962 in Lugano , Switzerland ) was an Austrian conductor , composer and pianist .

Life

Hans Rosbaud came from a family of musicians. The chemist and spy Paul Rosbaud was his younger brother. His mother, a valued pianist, gave him piano lessons at a very early age. He later studied composition with Bernhard Sekles and piano with Alfred Hoehn to Dr. Hoch's Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main .

In 1920 he was appointed director of the municipal music school in Mainz until he became the first conductor of the newly founded Frankfurter Rundfunk-Symphonie-Orchester in autumn 1929 . In 1937 he was offered a call to Münster , where he worked as general music director for a total of four years . In spite of this, he was still conducting concerts in Frankfurt in 1938 and in February recorded Leopold von Schenkendorf's hymn Gott bless our Führer with the choir and orchestra of the Frankfurter Rundfunk.

Following a three-year period at the helm of the Strasbourg Philharmonic , the Munich Philharmonic , the newly founded Baden-Baden Symphony Orchestra and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra were further stations of the conductor. After 1950, Hans Rosbaud, as director of the Südwestfunk symphony orchestra, played a key role in the restart of the Donaueschinger Musiktage . In 1954 he made outstanding contributions to the concert and in 1957 to the staged world premiere of Schönberg's opera Moses und Aron . In 1955 he premiered Pierre Boulez 's Le marteau sans maître in Baden-Baden with soloists from the SWF Symphony Orchestra. In 1960 Rosbaud was elected an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music ISCM .

Rosbaud was the first great "radio conductor". As early as 1929 in Frankfurt, in politically increasingly difficult times, he knew how to take advantage of all the opportunities offered by the new medium. In addition to the proven high artistic qualities, he was also committed to teaching. For example, he explained the instruments to the radio listeners and tried again and again to make contemporary music "broadcastable". World premieres by Hindemith , Krenek , Mieg , Penderecki , Stravinski , Veerhoff and Schönberg were just as much a part of his daily work as the performance of works from the past. Rosbaud's collaboration with Arnold Schönberg was remarkable, as was his ability to adapt to the new circumstances of the National Socialist era .

Record recordings

Although Hans Rosbaud conducted many radio recordings as well as some commercial productions throughout his life, his name was rarely found on records (and later on CDs). Almost all of his recordings come from the mono era and were only popular with a few connoisseurs at the time because of their often uncompromising severity. Recordings by the respective radio orchestras were mostly only broadcast in the respective broadcasting area and occasionally exchanged in the ARD area, but only a few appeared on sound carriers. The broadcasting corporations continued to produce exclusively in mono for a long time and were not interested in the then new stereophony because of the strict mono compatibility requirements.

For some years now, however, these radio productions have been offered “remastered” on CD and have caused a lot of astonishment. After the hi-fi stereo mania has subsided, one is surprised how well some mono recordings of the 50s and 60s were controlled and how clear they sound.

Rosbaud's broad repertoire is astonishing because he was - much to his displeasure - always considered a specialist in modern music. The music world was particularly amazed by the recordings of the Bruckner symphonies. (Due to illness, he could no longer record the 1st symphony.)

His development work in the rather tranquil Baden-Baden can be compared with the work of George Szell in Cleveland, which was also little known at the time.

Trivia

Hans Rosbaud was always seen as a committed, polite in tone, but very strict conductor. Richard Boeck, vice-principal and long-time director of the Kapellmeister class at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich, was also a conductor in Alsace (Strasbourg, Colmar and Mühlhausen) during the Rosbaud era. Occasionally he would tell the students a little anecdote: “After the break, during an orchestral rehearsal, the flutist could no longer get a sound out of the flute. His colleagues had put a paper ball in the headpiece. He finally noticed - after some desperation - the jokes of his colleagues. 'Even the stern Mr Rosbaud smiled.' ”Rosbaud was also sensitive enough to speak French in rehearsals with those musicians of the Strasbourg orchestra who were French and spoke no German. (In addition to his native German, he spoke French, Italian, English and Russian. He was also proficient in ancient Greek and Latin.)

estate

Hans Rosbaud's estate can be found at Washington State University in Pullman .

Works

  • Piano Trio (Novellettes)
  • Concert piece for bass tuba and orchestra (1936)
  • Concert piece for violin and orchestra (1918)
  • Overture to Grillparzer's Des Meeres und der Liebe Waves (1916)
  • Six songs for voice and piano
    • The summer evening is dawning
    • My darling, we drove together
    • My sleeping Zuleima
    • Once suffered a pennant (little story)
    • Invitation to sleep
    • Hail, you faithful maid
  • Serenade for string trio
  • Theme with variations for woodwind quintet

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 5841; 2nd edition: Auprès de Zombry 2009, p. 6235.
  2. ^ Arnold Schönberg Center ( Memento from February 20, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ ISCM Honorary Members
  4. ↑ Michael Kater: The abused muse. Piper, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-492-23097-0 .
  5. ^ Hans Rosbaud Papers 1899–1973 , accessed February 8, 2016.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rosbaud, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian conductor, composer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Graz , Austria
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1962
Place of death Lugano , Switzerland