Eduard Erdmann (5 March 1896 – 21 June 1958) was a

Baltic German Baltic Germans (german: Deutsch-Balten or , later ) were ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their coerced resettlement in 1939, Baltic Germans have markedly declined ...

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

and composer. Erdmann was born in Wenden (Cēsis) in the

Governorate of Livonia The Governorate of Livonia, also known as the Livonia Governorate, was a Baltic governorate of the Russian Empire, now divided between Latvia and Estonia. Geography The shape of the province is a fairly rectangular in shape, with a maximum ...

. He was the great-nephew of the philosopher

Johann Eduard Erdmann Johann Eduard Erdmann (13 June 1805 – 12 June 1892) was a German religious pastor, historian of philosophy, and philosopher of religion, of which he wrote on the mediation of faith and knowledge. He was known to be a follower of Friedrich Schleie ...

. His first musical studies were in Riga, where his teachers were Bror Möllersten and Jean du Chastain (piano) and Harald Creutzburg (harmony and counterpoint). From 1914 he studied piano in Berlin with Conrad Ansorge and composition with

Heinz Tiessen Richard Gustav Heinz Tiessen (10 April 1887 – 29 November 1971) was a German composer. Biography Tiessen was born at Königsberg, where he studied with composer Erwin Kroll before moving to Berlin. There, he enrolled at Humboldt University a ...

. In the 1920s and early 1930s his name was frequently cited among Germany's leading composers. Moreover, Erdmann had an international reputation as an outstanding concert pianist whose repertoire encompassed

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

and the advocacy of contemporary music. In 1925, he gave the premiere of

Artur Schnabel Artur Schnabel (17 April 1882 – 15 August 1951) was an Austrian-American classical pianist, composer and pedagogue. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th centur ...

's Piano Sonata, at the Venice ISCM Festival. From 1925 he was professor of piano at the

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

Academy of Music but was forced to resign from his post by the Nazis in 1935 and became an 'inner exile', composing almost nothing until after the end of World War II. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937; while not in sympathy with National Socialism, his decision was to avoid government harassment so that he could continue to work, like several other German musicians at the time. This action ruined his post-war reputation, and it did not recover in his lifetime. He resumed teaching as Professor of Piano at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg in 1950, but died of a heart-attack in 1958. His students at Hamburg included Aloys and Alfons Kontarsky. There has been little revival of interest in his own music and all his post-World War II works remain in manuscript; considering his inter-war eminence, he has received remarkably little attention up to the present day, but in 2006 the cpo label began issuing a series of CDs of his orchestral works. Erdmann came to critical notice as a composer with the sensational success of his First Symphony (dedicated to Alban Berg) in 1919. He was also close friends with Ferruccio Busoni's pupil

Philipp Jarnach Philipp Jarnach (26 July 1892 17 December 1982 in Börnsen) was a German composer of modern music ("Neue Musik"), pianist, teacher, and conductor. Jarnach was born in Noisy-le-Sec, France, the son of a Spanish sculptor and a Flemish mother. Besi ...

, as well as

Ernst Krenek Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study ...

, Artur Schnabel and

Emil Nolde Emil Nolde (born Hans Emil Hansen; 7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German-Danish painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and was one of the first oil painting and watercolor painters of th ...

. Like Tiessen and Schnabel, he was deeply impressed by Schoenbergian and Bergian Expressionism but did not adopt the twelve-note method, preferring a freely and often totally chromatic vocabulary with little or no sense of key. His total output is quite small, and surprisingly contains very little piano music: but it came to include four symphonies, Nos. 3 and 4 dating from after World War II and thus still unpublished (although the Third Symphony was recorded and released on the cpo label with the Capricci opus 21). As early as 1920 Erdmann issued a credo in which he declared himself opposed to the extreme

individualism Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reli ...

in music from

Ludwig van Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

to Arnold Schoenberg, and dedicated instead to the creation of a more objective music characterized by what he called the 'third-person forms' created by composers from

Heinrich Schütz Heinrich Schütz (; 6 November 1672) was a German early Baroque composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as one of the most important composers of the 17th century. He ...

to Anton Bruckner. Between 1921 and 1943, Erdmann often appeared with the Australian violinist

Alma Moodie Alma Mary Templeton Moodie (12 September 18987 March 1943) was an Australian violinist who established an excellent reputation in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. She was regarded as the foremost female violinist during the inter-war years, and s ...

, who lived in Germany. Erdmann dedicated his Sonata for Solo Violin, Op. 12 (1921) to her, and she premiered it in Berlin in October 1921. The Australian-English critic Walter J. Turner wrote of a recital he heard them play in London in April 1934, ‘it was the best violin piano duo that I have ever heard’. Their last concert together was given on 4 March 1943, three days before Alma Moodie's death, when they were in the middle of the cycle of Beethoven sonatas.

List of works

*''An den Frühling'' for violin and piano, Op. 1 *''Am Gardasee'', tone poem, Op. 4 (destroyed) *7 Bagatelles for piano, Op. 5 *5 Little Piano Pieces, Op. 6 *Fox Trot in C (dedicated to

) *Rondo for Orchestra, Op. 9 *Symphony No. 1, Op. 10 *Sonata for solo violin, Op. 12 (dedicated to

) *Symphony No. 2, Op. 13 *''Die entsprungene Insel'', operetta, Op. 14 (never scored) *Piano Concerto, Op. 15 *''Ständchen'' for small orchestra, Op. 16 *String Quartet, Op. 17 *Concertino (Rhapsody & Rondo) for piano and orchestra, Op. 18 *Symphony No. 3, Op. 19 (unpublished) *Symphony No. 4, Op. 20 (unpublished) *Capricci for orchestra, Op. 21 (unpublished) *''Monogramme - eine kleine Serenade'' for orchestra, Op. 22 (unpublished)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Erdmann, Eduard 1896 births 1958 deaths People from Cēsis People from Kreis Wenden Baltic-German people Nazi Party members 20th-century German composers 20th-century classical pianists German classical pianists German music educators Male classical pianists Piano pedagogues 20th-century German male musicians Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Germany