Emil von Reznicek

Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek

Emil Nikolaus Joseph, Freiherr von Reznicek (4 May 1860, Vienna – 2 August 1945, Berlin) was an Austrian composer of Romanian-Czech ancestry. (The family never used the Czech version of this name).

Biography

Reznicek's father was the Austrian officer Josef Resnitschek/Reznicek (1812-1887), who entered the army as a cadet and later became Feldmarschall-Liutenant, the second-highest rank in the Austrian army. He got an ordinary diploma of nobility in 1851 and in 1859 the rank as a Baron (Freiherr). His mother, Clarisse Fürstin Ghika_Budesti (1837-1864), belonged to the influential Ghika-family of Romania. His grandfather, Josef Resnitschek (1787-1848), was a trumpet virtuoso and leader of the band of the k.k regiments Nr. 32 (Esterhazy) at Budapest) and Nr. 60 (Gustav Wasa) in Vienna. In Vienna he often played together with Johann Strauss Sr. and Joseph Lanner. Ferdinand von Reznicek (1868-1909) was the half-brother of Emil Nikolaus. His daughter Felicitas (1904-1997) became a journalist and writer and a pioneer of female mountain-climbing. During the Nazi-era she was part of the German resistance movement. Later she became an agent of MI6 and one of its most important informants.^[1]

Emil von Reznícek spent his childhood at Vienna. In 1874 his family moved to Graz. He had piano lessons starting in 1871. His first compositions date from his time at Graz and Marburg an der Drau (Maribor) 1876-1878, where he visited the Staatsgymnasium.^[2] He studied law and music simultaneously in Graz from 1878-1880. He did not finish his law degree (1880), but continued to study music, his teacher being Wilhelm Mayer (also known as W. A. Rémy). Finally he went to Leipzig, to study with Carl Reinecke and Salomon Jadassohn. He got his diploma as a composer on the 9th of June 1882. Subsequently, he conducted at the theaters in Graz, Zürich, Stettin, Jena, bochum, Berlin and Mainz.^[3] In 1887 he moved to Prague. From 1890 to 1892 he was Kapellmeister of the 88th Infantry of Prague,^[4] and it was here that he saw his greatest triumph with the premiere of Donna Diana (16 December 1894). This also paved the way for his further career as conductor. He briefly ran for the succession of Eduard Lassen at Weimar; from 1896-99 he became Hofkapellmeister at Manheim. In June, 1897, his first wife Milka Thurn-Valsassina (1864-1897) died. In 1899 he maried his second wife Berta Juillerat-Chasseur (1874-1939). From 1899 to 1902 the couple settled at Wiesbaden, where Reznicek wrote his fifth opera Till Eulenspiegel, which premiered in 1902 at Karlsruhe, directed by by Felix Mottl. In the autumn of 1902, Reznicek moved to Charlottenburg, then a wealthy suburb of Berlin, where he remained for the rest of his live.

At Berlin, he had a good start with the first performance of his first symphonny and the revival of Till Eulenspiegel at the Court-opera. But then Reznicek distanced himself from the circles of Emperor Wilhelm II. In 1905 he composed some songs with obvious left-wing tendencies. For economic reasons he was forced to accept the position of chief-conductor of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra (1906-1908) and the Warsaw Opera (1907/08). There, he introduced the operas Salome by Richard Strauss and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Richard Wagner. In 1909-1911 Reznicek assumed the position of chief-conductor at Hans Gregors Komische Oper an der Weidendammbrücke at Berlin. (Not identical with the modern Komische Oper of Berlin). Today, Gregor is considered to be the founder of modern Regietheater. This experience clearly influenced Reznicek with his further operas, beginning with Ritter Blaubart (1915-1917). Gregor closed down his enterprise, when he became Intendant at the Court Opera at Vienna in 1911. Therefore, Reznicek lost his job as the conductor.

1911 proved to be a decisive year for Reznicek. His second wife, Berta, fell seriously ill and for a month it was not known whether she would survive. As Reznicek makes it clear in his autobiography of 1940, at that time he was seriously considering suicide. Finally all his fears and feelings were artistically condensed with his autobiographical tone-poem Schlemihl (1912). Originally a type of musical testament, like the sixth symphony of Tchaikovsky, Schlemihl met immediate success and became the starting point of Reznicek's second career as a composer. Like Janáček he wrote his most important work after the age of 50. First he completed Schlemihl by adding Der Sieger (1913) and Frieden - Eine Vision (1914), thus forming a trilogy of Tome-Poems. In 1914/15 (at the beginning of WW I) he wrote In memoriam, a requiem for fallen soldiers of all nations. In 1915/16 came his next opera, Ritter Blaubart, but imperial censorship forbade the presentation during the war, so its premiere happened only in 1920 at Darmstadt. All these works established his reputation as a composer of modern music. In the 1920s, he was considered to be of equal importance as Strauss and Pfitzner. With the Weimar Republic came public recognition: Reznicek was nominated Professor at the Hochschule für Musik at Berlin and Member of the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts. Reznicek himself responded with a continuous flow of new music until the spring of 1935.

When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, Reznicek (who was not interested in politics) had a problem:^[5] his wife Berta was of Jewish origin. Soon there were threats to blackmail the family. Berta only in the very last moment was prevented from suicide. She retired completely from the public and died early in 1939 from a heart-attack. Reznicek's daughter Felicitas tried to leave Germany and to settle in Switzerland, but received no permit to work there. Therefore, she remained in Berlin, where she entered the German resistance movement as early as 1934. Later, she also collaborated with the British MI6, becoming one of its most important informants. She had a personal relationship with Hitler's Adjudant Fritz Wiedemann and therefore access to the innermost circles of the Nazi regime. (Winston Churchill bestowed on her British citizenship in 1951). Strangely, her brother Emil-Ludwig (1898-1940), Reznicek's youngest son, was a fervent Nazi-sympathiser even before 1933. He was a member of the party and even the SS. When he appeared in Nazi-uniform in 1933, Reznicek was outraged and a complete split of the family was prevented only with the promise never to discuss politics. First Reznicek tried not to become involved.^[6] But in 1934 he accepted the invitation of Richard Strauss to become the German delegate at the ständige Rat für die Internationale Zusammenarbeit der Komponisten. Contrary to the opinion promulgated by Ernst Krenek this was not a Nazi-organisation but an invention of Richard Strauss tolerated by the Nazi-Propaganda. With some restrictions the Rat operated rather independently (at least up to 1941); organizing festivals and concerts with modern music in all its member states. Reznicek organized these concerts in Germany and in due course he was able to present compositions which were not particularly in-line with the Nazi-ideology. (E.g. the music of Jewish composers like Dukas or Wladigeroff or jazz-inspired works like The Rio Grande by Constant Lambert. When the Nazi-party tightened the grip on the Rat in 1942, Reznicek tried to resist and eventually resigned. Already in 1940 he had raised some suspicion at the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda with his autobiography, which was destined for publication but prohibited by censorship. During his final years the performance of his works in Germany diminished considerably. In 1943 he was evacuated from Berlin to Baden (near Vienna). There he suffered a stroke on Christmas Day 1943, from which he never fully recovered. Becoming more and more demented he was allowed to come back to Berlin n February 1945. He died on 2nd of August 1945 from hunger-typhus.

Reznicek was a personal friend of Richard Strauss. However, relations between the two were ambivalent. Reznicek's symphonic poem Schlemihl (1912) has been seen as a direct parody of Strauss' A Hero's Life, but in his autobiography, Reznicek strictly refused such an interpretation. The composer with the greatest influence on his own work was, according to Reznicek, Gustav Mahler. The use of (often sarcastic) humor is a feature of much of Reznicek's music, from the jibbering Blaubart in the opera Ritter Blaubart through the sardonic Dance around the Golden Calf from Der Sieger ("The Victor") (1913) to the expressionist Tarantella last movement of his Dance Symphony (No. 5, 1925). His opera Till Eulenspiegel, based on the German literary prankster Till Eulenspiegel, was troublesome in a world that was unaccustomed to the use of humour in music and art.

Reputation

Today, Reznicek is mainly remembered for the overture to his opera Donna Diana, composed in 1894. The overture is a popular stand-alone piece at symphonic concerts, and it served as the theme for the American radio (1947–1955) series Challenge of the Yukon, which later migrated to the TV series (1955–1958) Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. It was also used in the 1950s on the BBC's Children's Hour by Stephen King-Hall for his talks on current affairs.

Reznicek's break-through as a composer came with Donna Diana in 1894. This opera differs considerably from his first three operas written for Prague. Historically Donna Diana (written exactly at the same time as Humperdink's Hansel and Gretel opera) marks the decisive step away from Wager-imitation to Wagner-reception in the way of going beyond Wagner. (Strauss, with his Guntram failed to achieve this aim.) Reznicek's next opera Till Eulenspiegel goes further in exploiting the concept of a Volksoper including older music styles. In the 1908 revision of Donna Diana he eliminated further hints of Wagner. Nevertheless, in the years after Donna Diana he did not fulfill the expectations, Donna Diana had raised. It was only with his experience at the Komische Oper Berlin and the illness of his second wife, that Reznicek found a new and very personal style, that can be described as a sort of musical expressionism. In a letter to Ernst Déczy in 1921 he claimed to have modernized his style considerably. He never left the realm of tonal composition, but he often made use of bi-tonal constructions. And in the dramaturgy of his operas he was clearly influenced by silent-movie aesthetics. Reznicek was skeptical about the Schoenberg concept of twelve-tone composition, but not against atonalism per se. He greatly admired Alban Bergs Wozzeck and Lulu. Reznicek also was open to all types of music as possible souces for his own compositions; old music from the pre-Bach era, but also modern dance music and Jazz. (He make use of a Jazz-band in his Operas Satuala, Benzin, das Oper and even the ballet Das goldene Kalb. All this he amalgamated into his own post-Wagnerian style, creating an early example of Polystilistic Composition. The critics of his time did not understand this concept and often accused him of Eulenspiegelei.

In the late 1920s he was respected as one of the most important German composers of the 1860's generation. But even then his fame began to be surpassed by the modern music of younger composers. Like so many composers who had adhered to tonal music in the 20th century, and being still active after WW I, his music fell to oblivion after WW II with the rise of serialism. In the case of Reznicek, the situation was also aggravated by the false accusation, that he had been a Nazi-sympathizer. In the 1970s, the only conductor, who tried to give Reznicek's music some auditions was the late Gordon Wright. Together with Felicitas von Reznicek he founded the Reznicek society with such prominent members as Maurice Abravanel, Max Burle-Marx and Igor Kipnis. But with the passing of Gordon Wright this society stopped all activities. In 2012 Reznicek's great-grandson founded the Reznicek-Archiv at Wedemark,^[7] which is now the central point for all Reznicek research. The archive also digitized all printed Reznicek-scores and inserted them in the International Music Score Library Project. In 2013 the Editio Reznicek also began, with the aim to publish the numerous scores of Reznicek,^[8] which had remained in manuscript.

Works

Selected discography

• Thema und Variationen über die "Tragische Geschichte" von Adelbert von Chamisso für großes Orchester und Bariton. Performed by the RSO Stuttgart conducted by Carl Schuricht (Schuricht-Edition Vol. 14, combined with works by Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, and Max Reger) (Hänssler).
• Symphony No. 1 in D minor, "Tragic", CPO 777223-2.
• Symphony No. 2 ("Ironische"); and No. 5 ("Tanz-Symphonie"). Performed by the Bern Symphony Orchestra conducted by Frank Beermann (CPO 777 056-2)
• Symphony No. 3 in D major, Symphony No4 in F minor, was released by Schwann CD11091. (1984/85)
• Der Sieger (The Victor) for alto and orchestra. Performed by Beate Koepp (alto) and the WDR Symphony Orchestra and Choir (Cologne) conducted by Michail Jurowski (CPO 999 898-2).
• Schlemihl, Symphonisches Lebensbild für Tenor & Orchester; Raskolnikoff III (Schuld und Sühne, eine Phantasie-Ouvertüre 1930). Performed by Nobuaki Yamamasu (tenor) and the WDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michail Jurowski (CPO 999 795-2).
• Variationen über Kolnidrey (1929); Lustspiel-Ouvertüre (1883); Thema und Variationen nach einem Gedicht von Chamisso (1921); Ouvertüre aus "Donna Diana" (1894). WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Michail Jurowski (CPO 777 047-2).
• Konzertstück für Violine mit Orchester E Maior (1918); Wie Till Eulenspiegel lebte Sinfonisches Intermezzo in Form einer Ouvertüre (1901); Goldpirol-Ouvertüre (1903); Nachtstück (1905); Praeludium und Fuge c minor (1913). Performed by the Rundfunk-Symphonieorchetser Berlin, Sofia Jaffé (violin) conducted by Marcus Bosch. (CPO 777 983-2).
• Donna Diana (opera, 1894). Performed by Max Wittges (bass), Manuela Uhl (soprano) and others, Kiel Opera Chorus and Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Ulrich Windfuhr (CPO 999 991-2).
• Ritter Blaubart (opera, 1918). Performed by David Pittman-Jennings (baritone), Arutjun Kotchinian (tenor) and others, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Michail Jurowski (CPO 999 899-2).
• Benzin(opera, 1928). Prformed by Kouta Räsänen, Johanna Stojkovic, Guibee Yang, Susanne Thielemann, Matthias Winter, Chor der Oper Chemnitz, Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie, Frank Beermann. (CPO 777 653-2).
• String Quartet No. 3 in C-sharp minor (1921). Performed by the Franz Schubert String Quartet (Combined with Erich Wolfgang Korngold's String Quartet No. 1 in A major, Op. 16) (Nimbus 5506-2).

References

Further reading

• Sigfrid Karg-Elert: "Freiherr E. N. von Rezniček", Die Musik-Woche, 27 and 28 (1904), pp. 210f. and 218f.
• Otto Taubmann, "Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek", in: Monographien moderner Musiker II, C. F. Kahnt Nachfolger, Leipzig 1907, p. 215–230.
• Max Chop: E. N. v. Reznicek, sein Leben und seine Werke. Eine biographische Studie, Wien u. a.: Universal-Edition o. J. [um 1920].
• Richard Specht: E. N. v. Reznicek. Eine vorläufige Studie, Leipzig u. a.: E. P. Tal & Co. Verlag 1923.
• Wilhelm Altmann, E. N. Von Reznicek, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 97 (1930) p. 525–535.
• Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, Tagebuch (Lebenserinnerungen), Manuskript, 1940.
• Felicitas von Reznicek/Leopold Nowak: Gegen den Strom. Leben und Werk von E. N. von Reznicek, Zürich u. a.: Amalthea-Verlag 1960. (Based on Rezniceks unpublished autobiography of 1940).
• Thomas Leibnitz, Österreichische Spätromantiker: Studien zu Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, Joseph Marx, Franz Schmidt und Egon Kornauth; mit einer Dokumentation der handschriftlichen Quellen in der Musiksammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Tutzing 1986.
• Michael Wittmann: "Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek and the Permanent Council for the International Cooperation of Composers", Reznicek Studien 1, Musikverlag H. M. Fehrmann, Wedemark 2015.
• Michael Wittmann, "Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek. Ein Forschungsbericht", Reznicek-Studien 2, Musikverlag H. M. Fehrmann, Wedemark 2015.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Emil von Reznicek.

• Works by or about Emil von Reznicek at Internet Archive
• Free scores by Emil von Reznicek at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Reznicek research, MW-Musikverlag (in German)