Wilhelm Backhaus

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Wilhelm Backhaus, 1907
Wilhelm Backhaus - Signature.jpg

Wilhelm Backhaus (born March 26, 1884 in Leipzig , † July 5, 1969 in Villach , Austria ) was a German pianist . He is considered one of the most important pianists of the 20th century.

Life

Wilhelm Backhaus, drawn by Ismael Gentz , 1905

Wilhelm Backhaus was born on March 26, 1884, the fifth of eight children. His father was the businessman Gustav Ludwig Guido Backhaus, his mother Clara Marie Schönberg, with whom he played as a child. He was married to the harpist Alma Backhaus born in 1910 . Herzberg (born January 24, 1886, † December 22, 1978).

Wilhelm Backhaus became a student of Alois Reckendorf in 1891 and attended the Leipzig Conservatory from 1894 to 1899 , where he continued to study piano with Reckendorf and composition with Salomon Jadassohn . He gave his first concert at the age of eight. He also studied violin and counterpoint at the conservatory . From autumn 1899 he was briefly a student of Eugen d'Albert in Frankfurt am Main. He continued his piano studies with Alexander Ilyich Siloti . At the age of eleven he met Johannes Brahms .

He made his first public appearances in his native Leipzig, one when he was 12 years old, and then again at the age of 14: at the 2nd Philharmonic Concert of the Winderstein Orchestra in October 1898 he delighted the audience in the overcrowded Albert Hall with Mozart , Liszt and Chopin . His first public appearances abroad followed in Hamburg and Darmstadt: on November 20, 1899, he made an impression in the Darmstädter Saalbau u. a. with his interpretation of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major , and on March 29, 1900, the second concert followed in the Grand Ducal Hessian Residence (where he even lived from 1911 to 1915). In December 1900 he traveled to London and began his world career there. In 1902 he accepted Hans Richter's invitation to Manchester . His childhood friend, the cellist Paul Grümmer, accompanied him on the trip .

In 1905 he won first prize at the Anton Rubinstein competition in Paris , and second prize went to Béla Bartók . That year he was appointed professor at the Royal College Manchester . He gave up this post after a year due to his numerous concert engagements. In the following years he performed with numerous international artists, including a. with Teresa Carreno and the violin virtuoso Jan Kubelik . From 1905 to 1908 he gave “holiday master courses” at the Princely Conservatory in Sondershausen .

Due to his international success he made the acquaintance of the Hohenzollern and gave piano lessons to Crown Princess Cecilie until the outbreak of the First World War . Due to the advocacy of the imperial family, Backhaus was spared from being on the front lines. He was assigned to the personal staff of Crown Prince Wilhelm and gave numerous concerts for wounded soldiers at the front during the war.

After the end of the First World War, he went on concert tours through Europe, the USA and Australia. 1925/26 Backhaus taught at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia ( USA ). On February 22, 1926, he gave the farewell concert on his American tour. In the spring of 1926 he returned to Germany. Backhaus was considered a representative of German musical culture at the end of the 1920s and was the guest of numerous domestic and foreign diplomats. In recognition of his achievements, he was accepted into the Prussian Academy of the Arts .

Backhaus moved to Bioggio near Lugano in Switzerland with his wife Alma in 1930 , lived there in the Villa Wellingtonia on Via Giuseppe Mazzini and took Swiss citizenship in 1931, but continued to work in Germany.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis , he learned at the latest in May 1933 Adolf Hitler personally know, whom he accompanied on a flight to Munich. In the same year he became the Presidential Advisory Board of the Comradeship of German Artists . In 1936, Backhaus made campaign advertising for the Reichstag election on March 29 in the magazine Die Musikwoche in the In the Name of the Soloists section: "Nobody loves German art and especially German music more ardently than Adolf Hitler ..." April was appointed professor by Hitler and invited by Hitler as a guest of honor to the Nazi party rally in September of the same year . In 1938 Backhaus was also the Reich Senator for Culture.

After the Second World War he continued his career after a few years of concert abstinence. Concert tours have taken him to other European countries, the USA, South America, Japan and Australia. Wilhelm Backhaus moved to Salzburg and was invited several times as a pianist at the Salzburg Festival .

On June 25, 1969, Wilhelm Backhaus opened the Carinthian Summer in the collegiate church in Ossiach ( Carinthia ), he donated the proceeds from this benefit concert for the purchase of a new organ. The Wilhelm Backhaus memorial organ was built in 1970/71 by the Metzler Orgelbau company and inaugurated on June 11, 1971.

Grave of Wilhelm Backhaus in Cologne's Melaten cemetery
Grave site on July 5, 2019, the 50th anniversary of Wilhelm Backhaus's death

His last two concerts took place on June 26th and 28th, 1969 in the collegiate church in Ossiach and were recorded for the radio. On the second evening (June 28), after a fit of weakness, Backhaus had to change the original program and instead of the last movement of Beethoven's piano sonata No. 18 played two of the Fantasiestücke op. 12 (No. 1 “Des Abends” and No. 3 “ Why ”) by Schumann and, as an encore, the Impromptu in A flat major op. 142 No. 2 by Schubert . Wilhelm Backhaus died a few days later in Villach.

His grave is in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne (hall 20 in E). The artistic estate of Wilhelm Backhaus is now in the archive of the Research Institute for Salzburg Music History at the Department of Art, Music and Dance Studies at the University of Salzburg .

plant

Franz Liszt : Love Dream , photo taken October 15, 1923 in London

Backhaus distinguished himself as a Beethoven and Brahms interpreter. His ability to transpose works with ease is considered exceptional. The London " Times " praised him in an obituary in 1969 as the "greatest surviving representative of the classical German music tradition as it was cultivated in the conservatory of his native Leipzig".

Backhaus made in 1909 with the Piano Concerto by Edvard Grieg , the first complete recording of a concert work at all. In 1910 he was signed to the English Grammophone Company . In 1913 the music critic James Cuthbert Hadden named him one of the ten most important pianists in the world.

Backhaus was also the first pianist to record all of Chopin's etudes in 1927 (this is still considered to be one of the best interpretations of these works). He was considered a reliable concert and studio interpreter into old age. His best-known and most important recordings include the 32 Beethoven sonatas for the British Decca Records , the first stereo recording (with the exception of the piano sonata No. 29 in mono ), which was included on the quarterly list of the German Record Critics ' Prize and to this day as in Sharing is unmatched.

Music samples

Honors

Wilhelm-Backhaus-Strasse in Cologne-Lindenthal
Wilhelm Backhaus memorial organ in the collegiate church of Ossiach
Memorial plaque for the winners of the Mozart Medal in the Deutschordenshof in Vienna

Trivia

  • Wilhelm Backhaus played almost 5000 times in front of an audience in the 70 years of his concert activity.
  • Backhaus joked about the conductor Karl Böhm in 1967, during rehearsals for a Brahms concert, “This guy plays Brahms pretty well for his age,” Böhm was 73 years old at the time, a good ten years younger than Backhaus.
  • During a performance of the piano concerto in A minor by Edvard Grieg Backhaus found that the grand piano was pitched half a note too low and simply played the concerto in B flat minor [legend]

literature

  • Friedrich W. Herzog : Wilhelm Backhaus: the pianist of totality (= musical series of the Nazi cultural community . H. 8). Hesse, Berlin 1935 (brochure of 15 pages).
  • Roger Hauert (photos), Arnold H. Eichmann (text): Wilhelm Backhaus (= the great interpreters ). Kister, Geneva 1954.
  • Joachim Kaiser: How I saw them ... and how they were: 12 small portraits . List, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-471-77969-8 (one of the portraits is dedicated to Backhaus).
  • Piero Rattalino: Wilhelm Backhaus: il pastore; contiene repertorio e discografia aggiornata (= Collana Grandi pianisti. 2). Zecchini, Varese 2005, ISBN 8-887203-34-2 .
  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h “I've got back to where I started.” - On the 50th anniversary of the death of the pianist Wilhelm Backhaus. In: deutschlandfunkkultur.de. June 30, 2019, accessed on July 2, 2019 (German).
  2. ^ Arnold Heinz Eichmann: Wilhelm Backhaus . In: The great interpreters , Geneva 1957, p. 27
  3. ^ Peter Sundermann: 100 famous Saxons . Erfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-86680-606-1 , p. 98 ( digitized version)
  4. ^ Died: Wilhelm Backhaus . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1969, p. 128 ( online - 14 July 1969 ).
  5. ↑ a b c Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 213.
  6. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 23.
  7. ↑ Complete quote from Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , p. 213, see also Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 23.
  8. ↑ 10 years of the Carinthian Summer . In: Austrian music magazine . tape 34 . Vienna, S. 355 .
  9. ^ Josef Abt, Johann Ralf Beines, Celia Körber-Leupold: Melaten - Cologne graves and history . Greven, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7743-0305-3 , p. 162.
  10. ^ Inscription Deutschordenshof, Singerstraße: Wilhelm Backhaus 1961 (accessed on June 11, 2014)
  11. ↑ From Austria's music schools . In: Austrian music magazine . tape 16 . Vienna 1961, p. 139 .
  12. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb: Honors and awards (honorary members, ring of honor, Nicolai medal and the "yellow" list) . Ed .: Vienna Philharmonic. Vienna 2013, p. 3 .
  13. ↑ Answer to inquiry 10542 / AB XXIV. GP: Bearer of medals and decorations. Austrian Federal Chancellery, April 23, 2012, accessed on January 29, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Honorary Members of the Styrian Music Association , accessed on October 8, 2016
  15. ↑ Honorary members of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn Association ( Memento of the original from October 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 8, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de
  16. ↑ EH Mueller von Azow, Hedwig Mueller von Azow: Kürschner's German Musicians Calendar 1954 . 2nd edition d. German musician lexicons. Reprint 2019 edition. Berlin, ISBN 978-3-11-172167-5 , pp. 366 .
  17. ^ Konrad Adenauer and Volker Gröbe: Streets and squares in Lindenthal . JP Bachem, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-7616-1018-1 , p. 164 f.
  18. ^ Austrian organ database , accessed on October 19, 2016

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Backhaus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Backhaus, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pianist
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1969
Place of death Villach