Dr. Sanna Pederson, University of Oklahoma
Polish violinist Karol Lipiński, first violinist 1839-58 Dresden’s strong chamber music tradition in the 19th century owes much to Karol Józef Lipiński (30 October 1790 – 16 December 1861), a great virtuoso who had a passion for string quartet playing. Despite his fame during his lifetime, the violins his owned are probably what keep his name … Read more
How unique was the Joachim Quartet? When I started this blog about seven years ago, I was fired with enthusiasm for the Joachim Quartet (and I still am). But there is so little research available about other quartet groups, so it is impossible to know how historic this ensemble was. In some earlier posts, I … Read more
I was gratified to read among the headlines of the Berliner Morgenpost for 11 May 2023 news about correspondence between Joseph Joachim and Bernhard Hausmann, Robert Hausmann’s great-uncle. Seven letters were given by a member of the Hausmann family as a gift to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche Stiftung, in honor of the church’s cemetery, where … Read more
There were few signs that the Berlin of the first half of the nineteenth century would become a world capital of music by century’s end. Musicians didn’t like the city, especially the ones who had lived and worked there, such as Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn. Common complaints centered around Berlin being conservative, unwilling to try anything … Read more
The further we go back in time, the more obvious how arbitrary our knowledge of the past is. Most information about concerts comes from the press: newspapers and music journals provide the names, dates, and programs. For the most part, the news about performers and performances centered around opera, but that started to change once … Read more
August Zimmermann’s Quartet “The great prophet of Beethoven’s last quartets is definitely Zimmermann, 40 years before Joachim!”–Ivan Mahaim As mentioned in the previous post, Ivan Mahaim’s 1964 study of Beethoven: Naissance et Renaissance de Derniers Quatuors argued that the obscure violinist August Zimmermann deserved as much recognition as Joachim for his Berlin ensemble’s performances of … Read more
This illustration is the first section of a giant handmade chart included in the back pocket of Ivan Mahaim’s treasure-trove of a book on Beethoven’s late quartets, Beethoven: Naissance et Renaissance de Derniers Quatuors. The rows are the places of performances and the columns are the dates, starting in 1825. The numbers making up the … Read more