Bernhard Stavenhagen (24 November 1862 – 25 December 1914) was a German pianist, composer and conductor. His musical style was influenced by Franz Liszt, and as a conductor he was a strong advocate of new music.

Biography

Born in

Greiz Greiz () is a town in the state of Thuringia, Germany, and is the capital of the district of Greiz. Greiz is situated in eastern Thuringia, east of state capital Jena, on the river '' White Elster''. Greiz has a large park in its center (Fürs ...

, he commenced piano study in 1868. His family moved to Berlin in 1874 where he began studying with

Theodor Kullak Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...

. He entered university there in 1878, privately studying composition with

Friedrich Kiel Friedrich Kiel (8 October 182113 September 1885) was a German composer and music teacher. Writing of the chamber music of Friedrich Kiel, the scholar and critic Wilhelm Altmann notes that it was Kiel’s extreme modesty which kept him and his ex ...

In 1885 Stavenhagen became a pupil of Franz Liszt in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

, travelling with him to Rome, Budapest, Paris, London and Bayreuth. After Liszt's death in 1886, Stavenhagen embarked on a ten-year series of piano concert tours in Europe and to North America. In April 1890 he was appointed court pianist to the

Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (german: Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach) was a historical German state, created as a duchy in 1809 by the merger of the Ernestine duchies of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Eisenach, which had been in personal union since 1741. It was rais ...

and the following July he married Agnes Denninghoff (better known as Agnes Denis-Stavenhagen, 1860-1945), a soprano with the Weimar Court Opera. In 1893 he composed his Third Piano Concerto in B minor. He fulfilled conducting appointments in Weimar, where he was appointed court Kapellmeister and conducted Weimar premieres of six new operas in eighteen months, and from 1898 a similar appointment in Munich. Then in 1907 he moved to Geneva, taking over the piano master classes at the conservatoire there until his death in 1914. In subscription concerts he conducted premieres of works by composers ranging from Richard Strauss,

Hans Pfitzner Hans Erich Pfitzner (5 May 1869 – 22 May 1949) was a German composer, conductor and polemicist who was a self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera ''Palestrina'' (1917), loosely based on the life of the ...

and Gustav Mahler to Arnold Schoenberg, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. After his death his body was transferred to Weimar where he was buried. Among his piano roll recordings is a performance of Liszt's ''

Hungarian Rhapsody The Hungarian Rhapsodies, S.244, R.106 (french: Rhapsodies hongroises, german: Ungarische Rhapsodien, hu, Magyar rapszódiák), is a set of 19 piano pieces based on Hungarian folk themes, composed by Franz Liszt during 1846–1853, and late ...

'' No. 12; he annotated this recording to suggest that it was how he had heard Liszt play it. He is commemorated by the music school ''Bernhard Stavenhagen'' in Greiz.

References

Bernhard Stavenhagen

External links

* 1862 births 1914 deaths 19th-century classical pianists 19th-century German musicians 19th-century German male musicians 20th-century German conductors (music) 20th-century German male musicians German Romantic composers German male classical composers German classical pianists German pianists German male pianists German male conductors (music) Male classical pianists People from Greiz {{Germany-composer-stub