Wilhelm Stross

Wilhelm Stross (born November 5, 1907 in Eitorf ; † January 18, 1966 in Rottach-Egern ) was a German violinist and conductor . He was a professor at the music academies in Munich and Cologne as well as the first of the Stross Quartet .

Life

He was the son of the music director Carl Stross and his wife Auguste, b. Killmeyer. He received piano and violin lessons at an early age and gave a solo concert in the garrison hospital on Michaelsberg in Siegburg at the age of seven . At the age of ten he was accepted into the master class of Joseph Joachim student Bram Eldering at the Cologne Conservatory. The conductor Hermann Abendroth was also one of his teachers. 5 years later his father died so that he had to find his own livelihood. He got a state vacancy at the newly founded State Music Academy in Cologne . As early as 1928, at the age of 22, he won the renowned Mendelssohn Prize . In 1930 he passed his artistic school leaving examination with distinction.

In the same year he went to Berlin, where he worked as concertmaster of the chamber orchestra of Edwin Fischer and continued his studies with Carl Flesch . In 1932 he was appointed by the pianist Elly Ney together with the cellist Ludwig Hoelscher to the second Elly Ney Trio and celebrated international success with them.

In 1934 he was appointed to succeed Felix Berber as Germany's youngest academy professor at what was then the Academy of Music, now the Munich University of Music and Theater . Here, with cellist Anton Walter , violist Valentin Härtl and with Anton Huber as second violinist , he reorganized the Stross Quartet , which soon established itself as one of the leading chamber music associations. In 1936 there was a brief duo relationship with Claudio Arrau , but this came to an end when the pianist emigrated to America. In 1941 Stross founded the chamber orchestra named after him. With this he renewed a baroque tradition: the ensemble played while standing without a baton conductor and was led by Stross from the first desk. In 1943 he sought a connection with the winds association of the Vienna Philharmonic (the chamber music community lasted until 1962. With it he recorded the Beethoven septet and the Schubert octet, among others ). In 1944, Adolf Hitler added him to the so-called Gottbegnadeten list , which saved him and his colleagues from the war.

From 1951 to 1954 he taught as a professor at the Cologne University of Music. In 1954 he was again appointed professor at the State University of Music in Munich. From there he completed tours with his quartet and his chamber orchestra to many European countries, to the Middle East and several times to Asia. In 1955, Stross accompanied Konrad Adenauer on his historic trip to the Soviet Union as the German “Ambassador of Music” . The concerts in Moscow and Leningrad met with an enthusiastic response and had to be repeated several times. The work of Franco-German reconciliation begun by Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle was shaped by the Stross Quartet in its own way: Together with the French Loewenguth Quartet , unusual programs were performed from 1957 onwards by forming "nationally mixed" quartets, Sextets and octets came together and made guest appearances in major European cities. But his work as a violin teacher always remained central. Thus, the Munich University of Music became an internationally radiating "violinist forge" that produced numerous concert masters and soloists, such as Yūko Shiokawa , Takaya Urakawa , Oscar Yatco and others. However, Stross developed the greatest effectiveness as a pedagogue as a mediator of a chamber music tradition that could refer to Joseph Joachim. In the 1960s, for example, numerous quartet associations were founded with Stross students as Primarii (for example: Heinz Endres, Erich Keller , Josef Märkl , Gerhardt Seitz, Ingo Sinnhoffer, Kurt-Christian Stier - all of them later concert masters and / or professors the Munich Music Academy).

Stross was married to Ruth Hasse (1913-2009), a daughter of Reger's pupil Martin Karl Hasse, and had three children with her. He is buried in the Protestant cemetery in his last place of residence, Rottach-Egern am Tegernsee .

Awards

• Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize Berlin 1928
• Name Willi-Stross-Weg in Siegburg - Kaldauen .
• Naming Professor-Stross-Weg in Rottach-Egern

Discography - records / CDs

• Beethoven, Septet in E flat major op.20 for violin, viola, violoncello, horn, clarinet, bassoon, bass with Wilhelm Stross, V., Valentin Härtl, Va. Rudolf Metzmacher, Vcl .; Wind Association of the Vienna Philharmonic (Wlach, Freiberg, Öhlberger); Label: Elite
• Mozart, Quartet in G minor for piano, violin, viola, cello KV 478 HE Riebensam, piano + Stross quartet; Label: Elite
• Schubert: Octet in F major op. 166 with the Stross Quartet and the Vienna Philharmonic Wind Association; Label: Elite
• Mozart, horn quintet in E flat major KV 407 with Stross quartet and Gottfried Ritter von Freiberg, horn; + CM von Weber 'Gran Quintetto' for clarinet and string quartet op. 34 with Strossquartett and Leopold Wlach, Cla .; Label: Elite
• Schubert String Quintet D 956 + Reger String Quartet op. 121; Label Sound Star -History-

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 601.