Heinrich Rehkemper

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Heinrich Rehkemper (born 1894, died 1949) was a German

Second World War. The greater part of his career was spent as leading baritone at the Munich
opera house.

Rehkemper studied at

St. John Passion in a performance at Vienna
.

In 1925, he returned to the operatic stage, joining the

Marcello and Michele; and Malatesta in Don Pasquale. In the German repertoire he had roles in Pfitzner's Palestrina and Das Herz; Schultze's Schwarzer Peter; Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland, Goetze's Widerspenstigen Zähmung, Jokanaan in Richard Strauss's Salome, and others. He seldom sang outside Germany, but he made guest appearances at other centres such as Berlin, Bremen, Darmstadt and Cologne
. After the Munich opera house was bombed in a 1943 air-raid, his connection with it came to an end.

Rehkemper also had a wide repertoire of Lieder, notably songs by

Grieg, Richard Strauss and the Austrian composer Siegmund von Hausegger. In 1931 he gave a recital of Strauss Lieder at Munich with the composer as pianist. He performed song-cycles, notably Winterreise, von Hausegger's Hymns to the Night, and Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and Kindertotenlieder
, the latter being preserved in an effective recording.

Recordings

Rehkemper made many recordings. Three compilations are available on CD published by Preiser Records in the Lebendige Vergangenheit series.

Sources

  • A. Eaglefield-Hull, A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians (Dent, London 1924).
  • R. D. Darrell, The Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia of Recorded Music (New York, 1936).
  • M. Scott, The Record of Singing Volume II (Duckworth, London 1979), 223-225.