Harold Byrns

Harold Byrns (actually Hans Bernstein ; full name Hans Julius Bernstein ; born September 13, 1903 in Hanover ; died February 22, 1977 in Berlin ) was a German musician , conductor and composer .

Life

Hans Bernstein was born at the time of the German Empire at the beginning of the 20th century as the son of the concert agent Arthur Bernstein , who came from a Jewish family, and his wife Ottilie, who together set up a concert agency soon to be internationally known in Hanover. After the First World War and in the year before the peak of German hyperinflation , he passed his Abitur at the Hanoverian Leibniz School in 1922 . He then received his musical training mainly in Berlin at the Stern Conservatory . Walter Gieseking , Franz Schreker , Erich Kleiber and Leo Blech were among his teachers .

Bernstein worked temporarily as a répétiteur at the Berlin State Opera and as Kapellmeister in Lübeck and Oldenburg . During the Weimar Republic , however, he was dismissed in 1932 by the Oldenburg state government , which was already National Socialist .

After the nationwide seizure of power by the National Socialists and the systematic exclusion of Jewish artists, Bernstein made guest appearances in 1933 and 1934 as a concert conductor in several Italian cities. In Rome he first met the composer Igor Stravinsky when he was playing the Concerto for Two Pianos with his son. In April 1935, Bernstein and his wife Helena Bernstein emigrated to Italy, where he was allowed to work.

The Bernsteins had stored their property, including numerous valuable books, in the Bremen free port before emigrating to the USA at the end of 1936 . There Hans Bernstein changed his name and called himself Harold Byrns ever since. As a refugee and immigrant, he had to earn a living, initially working in New York and later in Los Angeles . In the United States he wrote arrangements for orchestra and film music. There he was in contact with Arnold Schönberg . In the meantime, the family's belongings stored in Bremen, along with scores and manuscripts, including autographs by Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Wagner , were "confiscated and declared forfeited by the Reich" by order of the Secret State Police , Bremen State Police Office , on March 2, 1942 been.

After the Second World War , Byrns founded the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony Orchestra in 1948 , with which he mainly performed contemporary pieces with works by composers such as Bela Bartók , Alban Berg , Arthur Honegger , Arnold Schönberg , Igor Stravinsky and Josef Suk .

In 1954, Harold Byrns returned to Europe, following an invitation from the Italian broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI). In October of the same year he conducted the Vienna Symphony Orchestra . In 1956 Byrns lived with his wife Helene in Vienna , but made a guest appearance in April of that year in his hometown, the state capital of Hanover , which at the time was still shaped by the post - war era . The Byrns family later moved to Berlin.

Harold Byrns was particularly committed to the music of Gustav Mahler , whose symphonies he revised for Mahler's 1960 edition. The American Gustav Mahler Society of New York finally honored Byrns with the award of the Great Mahler Medal. In addition, Harold Byrns played a decisive role in the 1963 lifting of the ban on Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony by Alma Mahler-Werfel .

In the divided post-war Germany, Byrns conducted operas by Mozart in the production of Walter Felsenstein in the Komische Oper in what was then East Berlin from 1957 to 1961 . From 1963 Harold Byrns worked as a permanent guest conductor of the orchestras of the Israelischen Rundfunks , later also of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR). In 1971 he conducted Schönberg's opera fragment Moses und Aron at the Deutsche Oper in what was then West Berlin .

An inscription on the family grave in the Bothfeld Jewish cemetery commemorates Byrn's parents, Arthur and Ottilie Bernstein .

literature

• Kurzgefassttes Tonkünstlerlexikon , Part Two : Supplements and Extensions since 1937 , Volume 1: A – K , ed. by Paul Frank and Wilhelm Altmann, continued by B. Bulling, F. Noetzel and Helmut Rösner (1974), p. 103
• Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933 (= International biographical dictionary of Central European émigrés 1933–1945 ), Volume 1, ed. from the Institute for Contemporary History, Munich, and from the Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration, Inc., New York. Overall management: Werner Röder and Herbert A. Strauss, Munich, New York, London, Paris, 1983, p. 177

Web links

• Harold Byrns on discogs.com
• Harold Byrns (1903–1977) in the Internet Movie Database (imdb)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} o. V .: Byrns, Harold in the database of Niedersächsische Personen ( new entry required ) of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library - Lower Saxony State Library in the version of April 13, 2013, last accessed on December 29, 2019
2. ↑ Information in the catalog of the German National Library
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Peter Schulze: Search for traces. Expropriated books as historical sources , in Thomas Elsmann (Ed.): In the footsteps of the owners. Acquisition and return of books by Jewish owners using the example of Bremen (= writings of the State and University Library Bremen , Volume 5), Bremen: State and University Library, 2004, pp. 69–95, v. a. Pp. 77-79 et al .; limited preview in Google Book search
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Peter Schulze : Byrns, Harold , in: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , p. 82 and Byrns, Harold , in: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 103
5. ↑ Carl Dahlhaus (Ed.): Byrns, Harold , in Riemann Musiklexikon , 12th, completely revised edition in three volumes, supplementary volume , personal section A – K , Mainz; London; New York; Paris: B. Schott's Sons et al., 1972, p. 177