Paul Pella

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Paul Pella , actually Abraham Morgenstern , (born March 20, 1892 in Vienna , † February 21, 1965 in Enschede ) was an Austrian Kapellmeister , conductor and musical director at the Stadttheater Aachen and, after his emigration, music director in Amsterdam and Enschede. Pella was of Jewish origin.

Live and act

After finishing school, Paul Pella studied musicology with Guido Adler at the Musicological Institute of the University of Vienna, which was founded in 1898 . This was followed by studies as a private student of composition with Arnold Schönberg , with whom he had a lifelong friendship. In 1917 Pella also attended special courses that Schönberg held at the renowned Black Forest School in Vienna , named after the Austrian pedagogue Eugenie Schwarzwald .

From 1919 to 1922 Pella was appointed conductor at the German Theater in Prague , where he worked with the acting director of the opera there, Alexander von Zemlinsky . After a few stops in Elberfeld , Münster and Dortmund , he moved to the Stadttheater Aachen as musical director in 1927 , where he was responsible for the recordings of the Aachen Symphony Orchestra under the general music director Peter Raabe . Here he drew attention to himself with his interpretation of contemporary music such as the opera Katja Kabanowa by Leoš Janáček , the suite Firebird by Igor Stravinsky and in particular the opera Wozzeck by Alban Berg , who was also a student of Schönberg. The opera Wozzeck, which he first performed in Aachen on March 25, 1930, on the occasion of the Niederrheinischen Musikfest in June 1930 and one year later in Amsterdam, is considered a milestone in the history of modern opera and one of the most important works of the 20th century .

Shortly before the seizure of power of the Nazis emigrated in 1933 Pella for safety's sake in the Netherlands after his theater director Heinrich Karl Strohm received the message by means of a postcard, " with the dog whip, we will drive the Jews out of the theater ." Strohm was loyal to Pella and for this reason, among other things, had to leave Aachen a little later. With the exception of a few engagements between 1935 and 1937 in Moscow, Baku and Tbilisi, Pella rarely appeared for political reasons until after the Second World War . It was only in 1946 that he took on a permanent position as music director at the Dutch Opera in Amsterdam, which he directed until 1951. After a subsequent brief guest appearance in Aachen, Pella hoped to succeed Felix Raabe as general music director, but Paul Mundorf , the artistic director of the Aachen theater , decided on Wolfgang Sawallisch . Pella then stayed in the Netherlands and on July 27, 1955, co-founded the opera company Opera Forum in Enschede , today's Dutch travel opera ( de Nederlandse Reisopera ), and was its first director. He worked here until shortly before his death in 1965.

literature

  • Archive of the Dutch daily newspaper De Twensche Courant - Tubantia , Enschede
  • A. Schönberg: Album of the students, Vienna 1924 , in: Ernst Hilmar - Redaktion, A. Schönberg , Memorial Exhibition Vienna 1974 , Gablonz / Böhmen
  • Klaus Schulte, Peter Sardoc: From Ringelhardt to Mundorf , artists and personalities of the Aachen City Theater , Josef Stippak, Aachen 1977
  • Alfred Beaujean: Paul Pella, musical director of the Statheater 1927 to 1932 , in: The Menorah. Journal of the Jewish Community of Aachen , No. 5 (Sep./Dec. 1988)
  • Markus Grassl, Reinhard Kapp : The teaching of musical performance in the Vienna School , Böhlau, Vienna 2002, p. 599 ( digitized )
  • Nina Okrassa: Peter Raabe - conductor, music writer and president of the Reichsmusikkammer (1872–1945) , Böhlau, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3412093041 , p. 164 ff. ( Digitized version )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Jule Klieser: People stood idly in front of the burning synagogue. In: Aachener Nachrichten . August 28, 2011, accessed May 13, 2017 .