Hanuš Wihan

The members of the Bohemian String Quartet (from left): Karel Hoffmann , Hanuš Wihan , Oskar Nedbal and Josef Suk . (1895)

Hanuš Wihan (born June 5, 1855 in Politz , Austrian Empire ; died May 1, 1920 in Prague , Czechoslovakia ) was a Czech cellist and music teacher.

Life

Wihan began his musical education at the age of thirteen at the Prague Conservatory with František Hegenbarth and continued with Carl Davidoff at the Petersburg Conservatory. At the age of eighteen he became a teacher at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. From 1874-75 he performed with the orchestra of the Russian patron Pavel Derviz in Nice and Lugano.

In 1875 he went on a concert tour through Bohemia with the pianist Josef Jiránek , a student of Smetana . In 1876 he became principal cellist of Benjamin Bilse's orchestra in Berlin and became known in Germany. the following year he was a member of the band in Sondershausen , where he met Franz Liszt .

In October 1880 Wihan joined the Munich court orchestra as a soloist and the string quartet of Benno Walter, which had existed there since 1875, as successor to Heinrich Schübel. Here he met Richard Strauss , who dedicated his sonata op. 6 and two pieces for cello and piano to him, which he premiered in 1882 and 1883. As a member of the Walter Quartet, he also took part in the premiere of Richard Strauss' string quartet in 1881. In the concerts of the Musical Academy he played the cello concerto by Bernhard Molique in 1880 and that of Alfredo Piatti in 1882 . The years in Munich were most fruitful for his further musical career due to the regular annual appearances with the Walter Quartet up to the spring of 1888, also on some concert tours, through which he gained extensive chamber music experience. In 1888 he succeeded Hegenbarth at the Prague Conservatory as professor of cello and director of the chamber music ensemble. In 1892 he went on a concert tour through Czech cities with Antonín Dvořák and the violinist Ferdinand Lachner . In 1894 he performed with great success at a concert of the Russian Music Society in Moscow with Robert Volkmann's Cello Concerto and Max Bruch's Kol nidrei . On the same concert tour he played Beethoven's string quartet op. 131 with Jan Hřímalý , David Krein and Nikolai Sokolowski and Chopin's cello sonata with Paul de Schlözer .

In 1895 Wihan played the private world premiere of Dvořák's cello concerto , which he had dedicated to him. After the public premiere with Leo Stern in London, Wihan played it in The Hague, Amsterdam and Budapest in 1899 under the direction of the composer. Wihan formed a string quartet from students of the Prague Conservatory, the violinists Karel Hoffmann and Josef Suk and the violist Oskar Nedbal , who were students of Antonín Bennewitz and his own student Otakar Berger , which was named Bohemian Quartet in 1892 and was called the Czech Quartet after 1918 . After Berger's serious illness in 1895, he played the cello in the quartet himself. He went on concert tours with the quartet through Europe and Russia, where the composer Sergei Taneyev and the writer Lev Tolstoy were among his admirers. His successor was his student Ladislav Zelenka , who led the quartet until it was dissolved in 1934.

source

• David Faber: Hanuš Wihan , at: Cellist-Database, blog, status 2010 (archived)