Andreas Paul Weber (1893-1980)
MUSIK
Johann Sebastian Bach
Organ Concerto in D minor, BWV 596 after Vivaldi's Concerto Op. 3, No. 11 - II. Largo e spiccato
What Artists Did Under Hitler
Read an excerpt from the book:
Einem was born in the Swiss capital Bern into an Austrian diplomat family. According to Einem's publisher, his father was William von Einem, military attaché of the Austro-Hungarian embassy.[1] According to another source, however, he was adopted by Einem, his natural father being the Hungarian aristocrat Count László von Hunyadi.[2] His mother, Baroness Gerta Louise née Rieß von Scheurnschloss, an officer's daughter from Kassel, led a lavish lifestyle between Berlin and Paris. The family moved to Malente in the Prussian Schleswig-Holstein Province, when Gottfried was four years old.
After his school days in Plön and Ratzeburg, Gottfried von Einem went to Berlin in 1937, to study at the State School of Music with Paul Hindemith who nevertheless resigned his post in October that year in protest against his modernist music being banned from public performances by Joseph Goebbels[3]. By the agency of the tenor Max Lorenz, he started an employment as a répétiteur at the Berlin State Opera, where in 1939 Herbert von Karajan became Staatskapellmeister. From 1938 onwards, Einem also worked as an assistant of director Heinz Tietjen at the Bayreuth Festival. In 1941 he began to take counterpoint lessons with Boris Blacher; at that time he wrote his first work, Prinzessin Turandot, at the suggestion of Werner Egk. The ballet was first performed at the Dresden Semperoper conducted by Karl Elmendorff in early 1944 and became a success. Previously in March 1943, Leo Borchard had first performed Einem's composition Capriccio (op. 2) with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
During World War II, in Berlin, Einem helped to both save the life and continue the professional development of young Jewish musician Konrad Latte by employing him as an rehearsal assistant for Prinzessin Turandot and later helping him obtain other employment. Einem obtained a ration book and membership card of the Reich Musicians' Chamber for Latte, and lent him his own pass to the State Opera as well as introducing him to friends who could help his underground existence.[4]
Through Blacher, Einem met his first wife, Lianne von Bismarck, whom he married after the war in 1946.[5] They had a son, Caspar Einem (born 1948), who is now a former Austrian cabinet minister who still sits in the National Council on the Social Democratic bench. In 1953, the family moved back to Vienna. Lianne von Bismarck died in 1962. In 1966 Einem married his librettist, the renowned Austrian playwright and author Lotte Ingrisch. Apart from Vienna, the couple spent much of their time in the Waldviertel of Lower Austria (specifically, at Oberdürnbach and Rindlberg/Großpertholz), a virtually pristine region that clearly inspired not only his own work, but also the literature of Ingrisch.
The composer died in Oberdürnbach in 1996.