Eduard Erdmann

Eduard Erdmann was a Latvian-born German pianist and composer whose most significant successes occurred in the period from the Weimar Republic. Essentially a modernist, Erdmann’s music can be similar to Alban Berg as well as the even more progressive post-Romantic strategy within Gustav Mahler’s past due symphonies. Nevertheless, Erdmann didn’t utilize twelve-tone derived methods, and his music continued to be essentially tonal within a fairly broad harmonic framework. Erdmann undertook piano research in Riga from age 11 and finally graduated to understand classes with Conrad Ansorge, a previous college student of Franz Liszt. Erdmann’s desire for composition evolved straight alongside the introduction of his pianism, along with the individual tutelage of his structure instructor Heinz Tiessen. Following the Armistice of November 1918, Erdmann started to make strides in both areas. A Berlin recital kept in 1919 was successful and his Rondo for Orchestra, Op. 9, was favorably received in German music circles. By the first ’20s, Erdmann was on friendly conditions with such well-known numbers as conductor Hermann Scherchen and composers Philipp Jarnach, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and specifically Ernst Krenek, who remain Erdmann’s wardrobe confidante. By 1925, Erdmann’s two symphonies had been played to crucial acclaim throughout Germany, and in 1929 he was called head from the piano division from the Cologne Musikhocschule. Using the rise from the Nazi party in 1933, Erdmann discovered his compositions condemned as “social Bolshevism” and prohibited from performance. A lot of his co-workers fled Germany, and in 1935 Erdmann resigned from his placement in the Cologne Musickhocschule. non-etheless, Erdmann continued to be in Germany and continuing to concertize, becoming a member of the Nazi Party in 1937. While Erdmann was no Nazi sympathizer and required his party cards primarily to safeguard himself from persecution, this decision would show fatal to his postwar status like a composer. Composing to Krenek in 1948, Erdmann mentioned “Given that the Nazi period has ended, my compositions are totally forgotten and undesirable.” In his last years, Erdmann was mainly leading a reclusive existence. However, beginning in 1950 he do teach piano a couple weeks a season on the Hamburg Musikhocschule, because of the kindly involvement of Philipp Jarnach. Among the pianists that researched with Erdmann in Hamburg had been the brothers Alfons and Aloys Kontarksy. Erdmann’s compositions stand for a singular accomplishment within one of the most interesting intervals of German artwork music. Nonetheless, just 50 years after Erdmann passed away of cardiovascular disease was his function getting revived for brand-new audiences to take pleasure from.