Dr. Sanna Pederson, University of Oklahoma
“Excellent concertmasters are even harder to do without than excellent conductors, as the history of all the great orchestras shows.” This remark comes from a Dresden music critic in 1855. Despite their importance (behind the scenes) and heavy responsibilities, concert masters also found time to be string quartet heroes. Those discussed so far in Leipzig, … Read more
Cologne was the capital of the Rhineland province of Prussia, with the much smaller Bonn and Düsseldorf not far away. In 1856 it had a population of 100,000 and was Prussia’s third largest city after Berlin and Breslau, while Bonn and Düsseldorf had populations of 20,000 and 40,000, respectively. Instead of a Königliche Kapelle, there … Read more
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
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
Joachim and the Gewandhaus: a sixty-year symbiosis Among the lore of this historic institution is Joachim’s debut as a twelve-year-old at the Gewandhaus in 1843. (Robert Eshbach has documented this event on his website). The Gewandhaus’s conductor Felix Mendelssohn and concertmaster Ferdinand David oversaw Joachim’s development as the child prodigy went through his teenage years. … Read more