Wilhelm Backhaus

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Wilhelm Backhaus, 1907

Wilhelm Backhaus ('Bachaus' on some record labels) (26 March 1884 – 5 July 1969)

pedagogue. He was particularly well known for his interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. He was also much admired as a chamber musician
.

Musical biography

Born in

Leipzig Conservatory between 1891 and 1899, then took private piano lessons with Eugen d'Albert in Frankfurt. As a boy of 9 or 10 he was taken to hear both of the Brahms
piano concertos performed by d'Albert — and conducted by Brahms himself.

He made his first concert tour at the age of sixteen. In 1900 he went to

Promenade Concerts. In 1904 he became Professor of Piano at the Royal Manchester College of Music.[2] In 1905 he won the Anton Rubinstein Competition, with Béla Bartók taking second place. He toured widely throughout his life - in 1921 he gave seventeen concerts in Buenos Aires in less than three weeks. Backhaus made his U.S. debut on 5 January 1912 as soloist in Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto (the "Emperor") with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra.[1] He taught at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1926. In 1930, he moved to Lugano and became a citizen of Switzerland. He died in Villach in Austria, where he was due to play in a concert. His last recital a few days earlier in Ossiach
was recorded.

Role in Nazi Germany

Although Backhaus and his wife had become Swiss citizens in 1931, he maintained an active career in Germany. After the

Nuremberg Rally.[3]

The violinist Leila Doubleday Pirani wrote that in November 1938, she attended a Backhaus concert in London (conducted by

Sir Adrian Boult) with the Viennese Jewish violinist Alma Rosé, who told Pirani that Backhaus "was a great friend of the family" and took her backstage to greet the pianist after the concert; but Pirani writes that while "Boult greeted us nicely," Backhaus, upon seeing Rosé, "turned his back and walked through a passage[way]"; Pirani called the incident "a stab in the back by this cowardly man, who for fear of his Nazi masters could not behave decently, even in London."[6] The incident is reported by Richard Newman, who writes his "offensive behavior... may have been due to his awareness of German agents operating in London at the time..."[7]
Newman also adds that Backhaus moved to Switzerland "in opposition to the Nazi regime". However, the Backhauses had moved there in 1930 several years before the Nazis came to power.

Recordings

Backhaus had a long career on the concert stage and in the recording studio. He recorded the complete piano sonatas and concertos of Beethoven and many works of Mozart and Brahms, and in 1928 he became the first pianist to record the complete Etudes of Frédéric Chopin. Backhaus' readings are still widely regarded as among the best recordings (Pearl 9902 and others) of those works.

Liebestraum No. 3 in A-flat major, S.541-3 (Liszt)
Backhaus's performance in 1923 of Liebesträume No. 3 by Franz Liszt, in London (3:58)
Problems playing this file? See media help.

In two groups of sessions in 1932 and 1936, he recorded a series of selected small Brahms piano works, as a connected project for HMV, including a 1936 recording of Brahms's Waltzes, Op. 39. His recordings of the complete Beethoven sonatas, made in the 1950s and '60s, display exceptional technique [8] for a man in his seventies (Decca 433882), as do the two Brahms concertos from about the same time (Decca 433895). His live Beethoven recordings are in some ways even better, freer and more vivid (Orfeo 300921). On the other hand, his playing was sometimes accused of being "mechanical" and "lacking in insight."[9]

His chamber recordings include Brahms's cello sonatas with Pierre Fournier, and Schubert's Trout Quintet with the International Quartet and Claude Hobday.[10]

The Times praised Backhaus in its 1969 obituary for having upheld the classical German music tradition of the Leipzig Conservatory. His phenomenal transposing powers spawned many anecdotes: finding the piano a semitone too low at a rehearsal of Grieg's A minor Concerto, he simply played it in B-flat minor — and then in the original A minor at the concert after the instrument had been correctly tuned.[11]

Backhaus was quick to recognize the importance of recordings. His drastically abridged 1909 recording of the Grieg Piano Concerto, lasting about six minutes, was not only the first recording of that work, but also the first recording of any concerto.[12] He recorded it complete, and magnificently, in the early 1930s.

At the time of his death, Backhaus had nearly completed his second complete Beethoven sonata cycle. All that was missing was the Hammerklavier Sonata.[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ a b Slonimsky, Nicolas; Theodore Baker (1992). Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (Eighth ed.). New York, New York: Schirmer Books.
  2. ^ Manchester Faces and Places (Vol XVI No 2 ed.). Manchester: Geo. Woodhead and Co Ltd. February 1905. pp. 45–48.
  3. ^ a b Fred K. Prieberg: Handbuch Deutsche Musiker 1933–1945, CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, S. 213.
  4. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 23.
  5. ^ Full quote to be found (in German) by Fred K. Prieberg: Handbuch Deutsche Musiker 1933–1945, p. 213, also see Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich, p. 23.
  6. ISBN 9781574670851
  7. ISBN 9781574670851
  8. ^ [1]
  9. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "The Art Of Piano Great Pianists Of The 20th Century". YouTube. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  10. CD: Biddulph
    [England]. LHW 038 (1997), 'Backhaus plays Schubert's Trout Quintet.'
  11. ^ The Times (July 7, 1969) "Professor Wilhelm Backhaus"
  12. ^ "Wilhelm Backhaus- Bio, Albums, Pictures – Naxos Classical Music". Naxos.com. Retrieved 29 October 2014.

External links

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