Isidore Bertheaume

Isidore Bertheaume (* around 1751 in Paris , † on March 19 or 20, 1802 in Saint Petersburg ) was a French violinist and composer .

Life

Isidore Bertheaume was the nephew and pupil of the violinist Jacques Lemière l'aîné († 1771) and was considered a child prodigy, whose performances of his own works and those of Pierre Gaviniès , Antonio Lolli and Felice Giardini in the years 1761 to 1769 with 19 appearances in concert Spiritually caused a stir. There he was a favorite soloist for a long time and, after a long hiatus, performed a further 31 times between 1775 and 1790, the year the concert series ended. In 1767 he became a member of the orchestra of the Académie royale de musique and in 1769 published his Op.1, which was dedicated to the Duchess of Villeroy. He was also director of the Concert d'Emulation (1786) and the Opéra-Comique (1788) and he played from 1787 to 1790 in concerts of the Société académique des Enfants d'Apollon . From 1789 to 1791 he was the conductor and co-director of the Concert Spirituel with Joseph Legros . These activities were suddenly interrupted by the burgeoning revolution and Bertheaume fled to Germany in 1791 with his nephew and student Charles-Philippe Lafont (1781–1839). There he played at several noble courts until the ruling Duke Peter I of Oldenburg and Prince-Bishop of Lübeck appointed him concertmaster at the court of Eutin in 1793 . In this position he remained until 1801, after which he traveled through Copenhagen and Stockholm to Saint Petersburg, where he briefly a position as head of the court orchestra of Czar Alexander I held.

Bertheaume was a rival of Giovanni Battista Viotti in Paris and was considered an outstanding virtuoso, if not entirely of Viotti's caliber. His compositions are ideally written for the violin and were rated very positively by his contemporaries. After the performance of his two Symphonies Concertantes in 1786, the reviewer of the Mercure de France reported that the audience had received both the composition and its interpretation by the composer and his student Jean-Jacques Grasset very well. His concerts are quite simply structured, but allow a comprehensive representation of the virtuosity of the soloist. The Sonata Op. 2, composed “dans le style de Lolly”, and the second sonata of Op. 4 are characterized by the use of the scordatura , which is rather unusual at this late point in time . In addition to Lafont and Grasset, his students also included Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni and Antoine Lacroix (1756–1806).

Web links

• Sheet music and audio files by Isidore Bertheaume in the International Music Score Library Project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Neal Zaslaw:  Bertheaume, Isidore. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).