Sanna Pederson, Professor of Musicology, University of Oklahoma
Posts about concert life in Berlin and related topics during the Kaiserzeit.
Joseph Joachim participated in a staggeringly long list of fund raisers, festivals and memorials over the course of his life. This includes the Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven Denkmal in the Tiergarten that was installed in 1904, a year after the Wagner statue. Joachim had started raising money almost ten years earlier, and when
Continue readingA monument for Richard Wagner, and the first for any composer in Berlin, was unveiled as part of a five-day festival in 1903. (A Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven Denkmal followed in 1904.) The statue of Wagner was by the sculptor Gustav Eberlein, who had also made some of the figures of German heroes and
Continue readingThis item from the Musical News of 1902 reports on the Beethoven Society of Tokyo, a chamber music club founded by an English amateur, who has engaged as its leader “Herr Junker, a pupil of Joachim,” who was a teacher at the “Tokio Conservatoire,” where “he has turned out some
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Joachim’s students as orchestral players Joachim was a critical force in the first decades of the Berlin Philharmonic. He contributed important administrative and organizational assistance and served as one of the <a href=”https://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/geschichte/anfang/#event-joseph-joachim-dirigiert”>main conductors</a> of the orchestra from 1882-1887. Perhaps just as importantly, his fame attracted string players to Berlin
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The price of a “popular” ticket was cheap and held remarkably steady. Tickets less than 1 mark could still be found in 1907, and only the premium seats of a popular concert would cost more than 2 M. This held from about 1880 to at least 1907, with a regular
Continue readingMarch Highlights In March there were 135 concerts, of which there were 25 piano, 19 orchestral, 16 chamber, 9 violin, and 33 voice recitals. There were 16 choral concerts, more than usual because of Easter on March 31. During Holy Week there were performances of both Mendelssohn oratorios and both
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The first season of the Philharmonic began in 1887 with ten subscription concerts conducted by Hans von Bülow. The popular concerts also began at this time. Not only did the orchestra play these three times a week, but they were often hired by soloists who wanted to play concertos, or
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