Karl Amadeus Hartmann (2 August 1905 – 5 December 1963) was a German composer. Sometimes described as the greatest German symphonist of the 20th century, he is now largely overlooked, particularly in English-speaking countries.

Reputation and legacy

Significantly, no major West German conductor  championed his music following his death: Scherchen, his most noted advocate, died in 1966. Some have suggested that this accelerated the disappearance of Hartmann’s music from public view in the years following his death. Conductors who regularly performed Hartmann’s music include Rafael Kubelik and Ferdinand Leitner, who recorded the third and sixth symphonies.^[4] More recent champions of works by Hartmann include Ingo Metzmacher and Mariss Jansons.

Hans Werner Henze said of Hartmann’s music:

Symphonic architecture was essential for him… as a suitable medium for reflecting the world as he experienced and understood it – as an agonizingly dramatic battle, as contradiction and conflict – in order to be able to achieve self-realization in its dialectic and to portray himself as a man among men, a man of this world, and not out of this world.

The English composer John McCabe wrote his Variations on a Theme of Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1964) in tribute. It uses the opening of Hartmann’s Fourth Symphony as its theme. Henze made a version of Hartmann’s Piano Sonata No. 2 for full orchestra.

Theo Olof, violinist

Dutch violinist Theo Olof, who was co-leader of the Hague Philharmonic and later concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, has died at the age of 88.

Born Theodor Olof Schmuckler in 1924 in Bonn, Olof and his parents, who were Jewish, fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and settled in the Netherlands. There the young musician studied with Oskar Back, making his solo debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1935 under Bruno Walter. In 1951, he won fourth prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the only Dutch violinist to reach the finals in the history of the competition. That same year, he was appointed co-leader of the Hague Philharmonic alongside Herman Krebbers, another pupil of Back. In 1974 Olof became leader of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, a post he held until 1985. He retired from professional performing in 1994.

Olof relished the life of a concertmaster, but he was also an exceptional soloist, combining his orchestral career with solo dates in Europe and further afield. During his career, Olof had several offers to take up posts leading other orchestras – including the Philharmonia under Otto Klemperer, and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy – but chose to remain in the Netherlands. He had several works dedicated to him and his musical partner Krebbers, as well as to him alone, including Bruno Maderna’s 1969 Violin Concerto.

During the 1970s, after wondering what the direction ‘piano luthéal’ signified on the score of Ravel’s Tzigane, Olof initiated important research into rediscovering and restoring the world’s last remaining luthéal – a device used for preparing a piano to sound like a cimbalom, lute, or dulcimer. He subsequently recorded the work for EMI with pianist Daniel Wayenberg. Outside the orchestra, Olof was also a teacher and broadcaster – he was head of violin at the Royal Conservatorium in The Hague until 1982, and in 1975 was one of the original founders of the Dutch classical radio station Hilversum 4. He wrote a memoir, Daar sta je dan (‘There you are’), which was published in 1958.

Emma Baker