The German composer and conductor Hans Pfitzner was an important figure in his own generation, a friend of the writer Thomas Mann and conductor Bruno Walter, and a Romantic in the tradition of Schumann and Brahms. He was for some years director of the conservatory, conductor of the symphony orchestra and director of the opera at Strasbourg, where his best-known opera Palestrina was first performed. He lost his position as a life member of the Munich Academy of Music in 1934 and then most of his possessions during the war, when his house was destroyed by bombing.
Pfitzner’s literary interests are reflected in his choral fantasy Das dunkle Reich (‘The Dark Kingdom’), using texts by Michelangelo, Goethe and others, and in the cantata Von deutscher Seele (‘Of the German Soul’), with its text by Eichendorff, a poet whom he greatly admired and whose poems he set in a number of songs.
Orchestral and Chamber Music
Pfitzner’s contribution to orchestral and chamber-music repertoire includes concertos for violin, for piano and for cello, a symphony, three string quartets, and works for other chamber ensembles with piano.
