Dr. Sanna Pederson, University of Oklahoma
Topography of Berlin Concert Life Interactive map of Berlin of locations of institutions and concert halls. Part of the digital Archive of Concert Life of the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung. Berlin’s train stations A series of articles published on the blog Hydrachos Potsdamer Platz: A Journey through Time includes photographs of other historic places in … 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
While paging through Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music yesterday, my eye caught an unexpected entry (between “Anzoletti, Marco” and “Apponyi, Count”): Waiting to applaud until the end of the work is called an innovation of late–and this book was published in 1929! Mr. Cobbett prefers clapping and even encores of individual movements of a … Read more
The centennial of Joachim’s birth in 1931 was observed in Berlin and elsewhere with tributes recalling the important part he had played in so many aspects of musical life. Only a few years later the Nazi re-writing of Germany history began, in which Jewish artists and intellectuals were purged from the German culture they helped … Read more
F. S. Kelly (1881-1916), pianist and composer Frederick Septimus Kelly is remembered today as one of the “lost” generation killed in World War I – specifically as part of the Hood Battalion of the Royal Navy, where so many of Britain’s young elite of talent and birth served as officers before being killed. But he … Read more
Here are a few excerpts about Berlin at the beginning of the twentieth century from the book Sergei Koussevitzky and his Epoch by Arthur Lourié (1892-1966). The author of the second biography of Koussevitzky described this book in his preface: “There was available an earlier biography of Koussevitzky by his friend Arthur Lourié. The value of … Read more