Manfred Reinelt

Manfred Reinelt (born February 5, 1932 in Leipzig ; † September 18, 1964 there ) was a German pianist .

life and work

Manfred Reinelt, son of a music businessman, was born on February 5, 1932 in Leipzig. At the age of 10 he came to the Musisches Gymnasium Leipzig, where he became a piano student of Hugo Steurer. A year after the end of the war, he began his studies at the State University of Music in Leipzig in the subjects of piano (continued with Hugo Steurer) and composition (with Paul Schenk and Wilhelm Weismann). In 1950 he passed the final exam in piano and a year later in theory, both of which he passed "with distinction". From 1950 Reinelt was a lecturer in ear training and assistant to Hugo Steurer, most recently as senior assistant for piano. In 1962 Reinelt took up a guest study of musicology with Heinrich Besseler at the Karl Marx University (today Leipzig University ). In 1963 he was advised by the music college to quit his job because he refused to “form socialist musical personalities”. On September 18, 1964, Reinelt passed away through suicide.

Reinelt's piano playing and concerts were exceptional. At a young age, he was compared to Walter Gieseking. He especially devoted himself to the modern and avant-garde. Composers such as Alexander Scriabin , Claude Debussy , Alban Berg , Charles Ives , Olivier Messiaen , Karlheinz Stockhausen , John Cage and Luigi Dallapiccola appeared on his programs very early - at a time when these composers were at best tolerated in the GDR. But Domenico Scarlatti's piano sonatas were also regularly on his programs early on. For the radio of the GDR he already recorded works by Messiaen, Ives, Milhaud and Berg in the 50s and early 60s, few of them have been published on record or on CD so far. His recording of the “2. Piano Sonata, Concord, Mass. ”By Charles Ives from 1960 is the second in the world (after John Kirkpatrick) and is still regarded as a benchmark today, as is his interpretation of Alban Berg's piano sonata from 1957. The German Broadcasting Archive has a total of over 60 recordings listed with Reinelt, including piano music by Arnold Schönberg , Hanns Eisler , Darius Milhaud and Paul Dessau .

Discography

• Béla Bartók, Kontraste (with György Garay and Rudolf Bartel) (LP with Eterna 1962)
• Piano works by Alban Berg, Luigi Dallapiccola, Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, Jean Françaix and Olivier Messiaen (LP at Eterna 1985)
• Charles Ives, 2nd piano sonata (CD re-release by Berlin Classics)

literature

• Eberhardt Klemm: And there will probably not be anything new either ... Manfred Reinelt - a forgotten pianist of the avant-garde, in “Traces of the Avant-garde, Writings 1955–1991” MusikTexte Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-9803151-4-2 , first published in: Positions . Contributions to New Music No. 6/7 1991 as: "Memorial sheet for Manfred Reinelt. A forgotten pianist of the avant-garde". Leipzig 1991

Web links

• Manfred Reinelt Archive in the Archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin