Vojtěch Hřímalý

Vojtěch Hřímalý

Vojtěch Hřímalý ( Adalbert Hrimaly , born July 30, 1842 in Pilsen , † June 15, 1908 in Vienna ) was a Czech composer, violinist and conductor.

Life

The son of an organist and music teacher studied at the Prague Conservatory and was given the position of concertmaster in Amsterdam at an early age. In 1860, at the age of eighteen, he came to Gothenburg, where he worked for seven years as an organist, conductor and composer.

In 1867 he followed Smetana's call to the newly founded National Theater in Prague, where he worked as concertmaster for eight years. It was here that his first major opera, Zakletý princ ( The Enchanted Prince ) was written. a. was played in Pilsen, Brno, Graz and Chernivtsi.

Due to internal disputes, he moved to the German State Theater in Prague as second Kapellmeister. At the invitation of the violinist Leon Koffler , at the end of 1874 he took over the position of artistic director of the Society for the Promotion of Music in the Bukowina in Chernivtsi, where he worked for 34 years as a conductor and music teacher.

With Koffler, Leon von Gojan and Basil von Duzinkiewicz he founded a string quartet with which he regularly gave concerts and to which he invited pianists who traveled through the country. At the spiritual concerts that he held annually around Easter, church music works and a. performed by Palestrina , Pergolesi , Astorga , Gioachino Rossini , Handel , Brahms and Mendelssohn . The world premiere of his second opera Švanda dudák ( Schwanda, the Bagpiper ) took place in Pilsen in 1896.

Hřímalý's brothers Jaromir and Jan and his son Otakar Hřímalý were also known as musicians.

Web links

• Literature and other media by and about Vojtěch Hřímalý in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
• Anton Norst: The Association for the Promotion of Music in Bukovina 1862-1902 , Chernivtsi 1903