Ossip Gabrilowitsch ca. 1906

Ossip Gabrilowitsch (Осип Сaломонович Габрилович, Osip Salomonovich Gabrilovich; he used the German transliteration Gabrilowitsch in the West) (7 February [O.S. 26 January] 1878 – 14 September 1936) was a Russian born American pianist and conductor.[1]

Ossip Gabrilowitsch was born in Saint Petersburg. He studied the piano and composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, with Anton Rubinstein, Anatoly Lyadov, Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai Medtner among others. After graduating in 1894, he spent two years studying piano with Teodor Leszetycki in Vienna.

In July 1905 he recorded 10 pieces for the reproducing piano Welte-Mignon, one of the first pianists to do so.

From 1910 to 1914 he was conductor of the Munich Konzertverein. Gabrilowitsch was still in Munich in 1917. There was a pogrom in Munich that year as a result of which Gabrilowitsch was put in jail. Through the intervention of the papal nuncio to Bavaria, Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), Gabrilowitsch was able to be freed from jail and then head on to Zurich and America.[2]

He settled in the USA, and in 1918 was appointed the founding director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, while maintaining his life as a concert pianist. Before accepting the conductor's position, he demanded a new auditorium be built, and this was the impetus for the building of Orchestra Hall.

In 1909, he married Mark Twain's daughter Clara Clemens, a singer who appeared with him in recital. He composed a few works, primarily short piano pieces for his own use. He died in Detroit in 1936 and, along with Clara and her father, is buried in the Langdon plot of the Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York.

Contents

[edit] Works

  • 5 Klavierstücke, Op. 1
    • No. 3 Valse lente (ca. 1897)
  • Gavotte in D minor, Op. 2
  • Compositions for the piano, Op. 3
    • No. 1 Caprice Burlesque (ca 1901)
    • No. 2 Mazurka Mélancolique
  • Thème varié pour piano, Op. 4
  • Mélodie, Op. 8, No.1
  • La Czarina, Mazurka Russe (The Tsarina, Russian Mazurka)
  • Three Songs Op. 11:
    • No. 1 Good-bye (Christina Rossetti)
    • No. 2 I love her gentle forehead (R. W. Gilder.)
    • No. 3 The new day (R. W. Gilder.) (ca. 1917)
  • Two Piano Pieces Op. 12
    • No. 1 Elegy
    • No. 2 Etude for the left hand
  • Near to thee ... [Song.] Poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, English version by Clara Clemens (ca. 1924)

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Clara Clemens: My husband Gabrilowitsch. Reprint of the ed. published by Harper, New York. New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 1979. ISBN 0-306-79563-9
  • Cooke, James Francis: Great Pianists on Piano Playing: Godowsky, Hofmann, Lhévinne, Paderewski and 24 Other Legendary Performers. New York (Dover) 1999. (Reprint of the original edition 1917).
  1. ^ Gabrilowitsch, Ossip, Encyclopædia Britannica Online Library Edition, 2008, http://library.eb.com/eb/article-9035767, retrieved on 28 April 2008 
  2. ^ Rabbi David G. Dalin. The Myth of Hitler's Pope. (Washington: Regency Publishing Inc., 2005) p. 50

[edit] Media

v • d • e
Detroit Symphony Orchestra Music Directors

Weston Gales (1914) · Ossip Gabrilowitsch (1918) · Victor Kolar (1940) · Karl Krueger (1944) · Paul Paray (1951) · Sixten Ehrling (1963) · Aldo Ceccato (1973) · Antal Doráti (1977) · Günther Herbig (1984) · Neeme Järvi (1990) · Leonard Slatkin (2008)
Persondata
NAME Gabrilowitsch, Ossip Salomonowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gabrilovich, Osip Salomonovich
SHORT DESCRIPTION russian-american pianist and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH 7 February 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH SaintPetersburg
DATE OF DEATH 14 September 1936
PLACE OF DEATH Detroit
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