Peter Gellhorn (born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) on 24 October 1912)
https://www.petergellhorn.com/
This resource is part of Singing a Song in a Foreign Land,
the Royal College of Music research and performance project highlighting the contribution of musicians who fled from Nazi Germany and Austria to musical life in Britain and beyond.
It was created during the Cultural Engagement Project "Exile Estates and Music Restitution - The Musical Legacy of the Conductor / Composer Peter Gellhorn"
supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
© 2016 by Royal College of Music
Peter Gellhorn
by Martin Anderson
http://www.suppressedmusic.org.uk/newsletter/obituaries/petergellhorn.html#martin
Peter Gellhorn, conductor, teacher and composer: born Breslau, Germany 24 October 1912; Musical Director, Toynbee Hall 1935-39; Assistant Conductor, Sadler's Wells Opera 1941-43; Conductor, Royal Carl Rosa Opera 1945-46; Conductor and Head of Music Staff, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1946-53; Conductor and Chorus Master, Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1954-61, 1974-75; Director, BBC Chorus 1961-72; Conductor, Elizabethan Singers 1976-80; Professor, Guildhall School of Music and Drama 1981-92; married 1943 Olive Layton (two sons, two daughters); died Kingston upon Thames, Surrey 13 February 2004.
Peter Gellhorn was one of the many Jewish or part-Jewish Hitlerflüchtlinge whose presence immeasurably enriched Britain's cultural life. Music was especially blessed: Hans Keller, Berthold Goldschmidt, Hans Gál, Peter Stadlen, Otto Erich Deutsch, Erwin Stein — these men and many like them transformed the parochial outlook of pre-Second World War British music-making, laying the foundation for the unparalleled richness of musical life in the UK today. Though a less public figure than, say, Keller, in Gellhorn's area of expertise — vocal music in general and opera in particular — he was as influential as any of them.
Gellhorn was born in Breslau (which these days is Wrocláw, in Poland) in 1912, into a comfortable family where music was part of the fabric of daily life — his father was an architect, who was also to flee to Britain from the Nazis. His parents moved to Berlin in 1923 and divorced soon afterwards: Peter had been born illegitimately and was then brought up by his mother alone. He attended the Schiller Realgymnasium before going on to the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1932, where he gained a number of prizes, for both piano and conducting. His main teachers were Richard Rössler (piano), Leo Schrattenholz (composition) and Julius Prüwer and Clemens Schmalstich (conducting). Franz Schreker had been the director of the Hochschule on Gellhorn's arrival, but with the Nazi accession to power he was replaced by Fritz Stein, generally remembered as a supporter of the new regime. But Gellhorn, reminiscing almost 70 years later, was quick to defend him against a black-and-white interpretation of the times:
Stein was quite helpful — he behaved very well indeed, and I have only very pleasant memories of him and of Schmalstich. One could hardly refuse the jobs they were offered, but they didn't approve of what was going on.
Leaving the Hochschule in 1934, Gellhorn then studied music history (with Arnold Schering) and art history at Berlin University.
In 1935 he escaped to Britain, coming to London after a few months in Ascot and, at the end of the year, moving to Toynbee Hall (a settlement of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge) in the East End of London. There, until 1939, he lectured on opera, conducted the chorus and presented chamber concerts and piano recitals. It was at Toynbee Hall that he made his début as an operatic conductor, presenting Gluck's Orfeo, in a translation by Edward Dent (who was present); the décor was by Lotte Reininger, for whom Gellhorn had written film scores in Germany as he did again in England.
In the first months of the war he toured a concert programme with two singers,
before returning to London where, in 1940, he was interned, like all 'enemy
aliens' (Hans Gál observed, 'It was a very curious policy, to lock up Hitler's
best enemies'). His first internment camp was at Warth Mills, near Bury in
Lancashire ('an awful place'), before he was moved to the Isle of Man, where his
fellow internees included Hans Keller and three members of what would become the
Amadeus Quartet. 'I never did more music than in that camp,' he recalled:
although he was not allowed access to scores (printed material was forbidden),
he called on his memory to give piano recitals, and taught harmony, the piano,
singing and so on.
Upon release in 1941 he went to Burnley to meet the agent of the Vic-Wells
company — the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells — and was engaged as répétiteur for
Sadler's Wells opera by the singer Joan Cross, its director, and Lawrance
Collingwood, the music director.
It was through Vic-Wells that Gellhorn met his wife, Olive (daughter of the economist Lord Layton), who was an actress with the Old Vic. On the evening of their wedding Gellhorn conducted his first Traviata, with the whole company present at the reception (Joan Cross sang Violetta, and Peter Pears, as Alfredo, was making his first appearance in opera). In 1943, after a year at Sadler's Wells, Gellhorn was called up for industrial war service and spent the remainder of the conflict working in a factory that made aircraft components.
With the return of peace he joined the Carl Rosa opera company (1945-46), tucking over a hundred performances under his belt before Karl Rankl, a fellow refugee a few years earlier and now music director at the Royal Opera House, Covert Garden, appointed him conductor and head of music staff there. He was to remain for seven years, conducting some 270 performances, most of which he had prepared from their early stages, also working as répétiteur and coach for productions conducted by others.
The next seven years (1954-61) were spent as conductor and chorus director at Glyndebourne Festival Opera; here, too, he conducted a generous number of operas. He then moved to the BBC, where for 11 years (1961-72) he was director of the BBC Chorus, taking over from Leslie Woodgate and conducting them at several Proms. When in 1974 he reached the BBC's compulsory retirement age and was shown the door, he returned to Glyndebourne, staying for two more years. In his 'retirement' he was active as a freelance pianist, vocal coach and conductor, leading his own choir in Barnes from 1973 until 2000.
Peter Gellhorn was associated with many other music groups. He was co-founder and music director of Opera Barga in Tuscany (1967-69), conductor of the Morley College Opera Group (1973-79) and the Elizabethan Singers (1976-80), music director of London Opera Players (1960-2000), a member of the opera-school staff at the Royal College of Music (1980-88) and professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (1981-92). He also lectured and adjudicated widely, in Britain and abroad.
For all the relentless activity of his life, Gellhorn was devoid of personal
ambition. Typically both of his modesty and his perfectionism, he once turned
down an opportunity to conduct The Threepenny Opera in the West End: he
didn't think the sanitised translation, by the American composer Marc Blitzstein,
was good enough, even though Kurt Weill himself was consulted and approved of
it.
Gellhorn's composing was perhaps the least well-known of his activities. His own
works — or at least 'the ones I am prepared to own up to' — include two string
quartets, written before he left Germany, a 'small oratorio', Baida der Kosak
(1935: the work he said he would most like to see revived), as well as a number
of other chamber pieces and songs. He often composed for his musician friends:
the two-piano team of John Tobin and Tilly Connelly, for example, received a
sonata and a Dance of the Dead in 1936, and his duo-partnership with the
violinist Maria Lidka was furnished with an Intermezzo and a Capriccio. In 1939
he wrote incidental music for Toynbee Hall productions of Romeo and Juliet
and Le Malade imaginaire. And, in internment on the Isle of Man in 1940,
he wrote for the instruments available: The Cats for string quartet and
Two Studies for solo violin. His last composition, a song, was penned in
1995, when he was in his mid-eighties. Though his personal acquaintances
included Pierre Boulez and Olivier Messiaen (and he was a formative influence on
the young George Benjamin), his own style is tonal and relatively conservative;
the craftsmanship is of a high order.
Gellhorn's music provided a startling illustration of his continued mental powers, well into what was supposed to be old age. Two years ago, when he was 89, I went to see him to discuss which of his compositions the International Forum for Suppressed Music should present in two concerts of composers who had taken refuge from Hitler in Britain. He provided the illustrations at the piano, from memory (I had the scores at the other end of the instrument), including such works as the Piano Sonata he had written in January 1936, almost seven decades earlier, dipping into others in mid-movement to play passages he was especially fond of — all of it note-perfect.
Peter Gellhorn's memory will also live on among the singers whom he found
time to coach privately, helping what must now be many hundreds. One of them,
the contralto Phillida Bannister, who studied with him from the mid-1980s, found
that the quiet manner, gently piquant humour and diminutive frame hid a
demanding teacher:
He was very severe; I was probably one of the few people whom he never made cry.
But he made you understand music. His gift as a teacher was that he made you
believe you could do it, even though he was incredibly hard. And you felt every
expression that was required just from his playing: he gave you that support, he
made it easy to sing. He had a total understanding of the voice — it was
instinctive. And although he was no singer himself — he had a terrible voice —
he could encapsulate a style in instant: when he sang Weill, he sounded exactly
like Brecht or Ernest Busch. Because he was so immersed in the music, he made it
sound right.
* * *
Peter Gellhorn and his family were friends of our family dating back to the
1930s, writes Professor Richard Robbins. He represented those who brought
so much benefit to Britain and reminded us of the tragedy at the heart of Europe
that brought him here.
May I just comment on his private-public performances late in life? Hiring, or having hired for him, a venue, he would present evenings when he would demonstrate his understandings of composer's intentions, speaking of and playing through them. Memorable, for example, was his singing, playing and talking through the Ring Cycle and Mozart's operas.
These performances in very old age were informed and driven by a freshness and directness that amounted to the very breath of originality. His perceptions drove his aging being into totally unexpected spheres of expression, demonstrating the true importance of art in the living of life.
First published in The Independent on 21 February 2004
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter Gellhorn (October 24, 1912 - February 13, 2004) was a German conductor,
composer, pianist and teacher who settled in London and made a career in Britain
that lasted unbroken until his death.
Gellhorn, the son of an architect, came from a typically musical Jewish family
and was educated at the Schiller Realgymnasium, at Berlin University and at the
Berlin Music Academy. He was a pupil of the composer Franz Schreker. When the
National Socialists came to power he was obliged to leave Germany and settled in
England, although he was interned in Mooragh Camp on the Isle of Man as an enemy
alien from 1939 to 1941.
During his later career he conducted at Glyndebourne, at the Royal Opera House (at
the invitation of its conductor, Karl Rankl); with the Carl Rosa Opera Company
and for the BBC, where he conducted the BC Singers for eleven years. In later
life he taught and coached singers and other musicians from his home in
south-west London.
He married the actress Olive Layton in 1943; they had two sons and two daughters.
A Personal Tribute to Peter Gellhorn from his Old Chorister and Friend,
Janet Baker
Delivered at the memorial service for Peter Gellhorn, 25 October 2004
http://www.suppressedmusic.org.uk/newsletter/obituaries/petergellhorn.html
The rise of Nazi Germany during the 1930s had an unexpected side effect on the
life of this country. We received a gift in the form of people: talented people.
They were like a shot in the arm and brought with them an extra-ordinary wealth
of mind and spirit. I was lucky enough to know quite a number of them, one of
the most influential, in terms of the impact he made on me as a young musician,
was Peter, in his capacity as master of the Glyndebourne Chorus.
To walk into the chorus rehearsal room in 1956 was unforgettable. My colleagues
then as now, were all very much up and coming performers convinced that the
world was their oyster and that fame and fortune
beckoned. Peter was good to us: we were chosen and special in a way, but he was
very anxious to make us aware of our great luck in being there at all and also
of the huge privilege and responsibility that membership of the Glyndebourne
Chorus carried with it. He impressed on us that the chance to watch, listen and
learn from both the music staff and distinguished colleagues around us was an
unparalleled opportunity which we should grasp with enthusiasm.
He taught us the value of discipline. To be on time: rehearsal time is expensive
and being late was an inexcusable and unforgivable sin. To learn our work: t o
study our choruses and our lines. I was given a small
understudy role in a Rossini opera which involved fast passages of music and a
lot of words. Some bright spark informed me that we were very rarely if ever
called to the stage and advised me not to waste my time learning it: I decided
to obey my chorus master and ignored him. Peter used to say that to learn our
understudies was not only useful but was also a matter of personal integrity
since we were being paid a small sum for doing so.
Sure enough, some time later, I was called out of the chorus rehearsal room and
told to report on stage: one of the Italian singers was unwell and I was
required to do the last half-hour or so of the morning rehearsal before the
lunch break. It just so happened that they had reached the first-act finale, a
very fast and wordy ensemble which had taken me hours of sweat to learn: I found
myself on stage with the principals and expected to fit in at a moment's notice.
If the lesson Peter had taught us hadn't been taken seriously, I would have been
left with a large amount of egg in my face.
He taught us respect for the music: to regard the notes on the page as
sacrosanct. He showed us the amount of work necessary to achieve international
standards. He told us time and again to put passion into our singing. So often
down the succeeding years I've heard his voice urging us to "sing with a will":
I strived all my working life to do just that. He was proud of us and sometimes
used to tell us so. To be exposed to quality is great good fortune and we always
remember those who inspire us especially when we're young. Peter was a great
chorus master and a great influence.
In recent years the phone would ring on my birthday and I would hear Peter's
voice at the end of the line, sounding just as always: he would greet me
affectionately. It was good to have those calls. One of the sad aspects of loss
is the store of memories our friends take with them. My recollections of Peter
and our Glyndebourne days are not necessarily like his: everybody sees the same
situation slightly differently. We need shared memories to get a clearer picture
of our lives.
Those who help us, teach us, encourage us and give us confidence remain special:
The contribution Peter made to my own development as a musician is something
I've cherished and never ceased to be grateful for: It means such a lot to me to
have this opportunity to acknowledge my debt to him and to say 'thank you'
before his family and friends this afternoon.
Rebecca Watt, oboe
Lucy Colquhoun, piano
Recorded at RCM Studios 2016
Alke Quartet
Recorded 2016 at RCM Studio London
Producer: Raphael Mouterde
Eleanor Hodgkinson, piano / Jakob Fichert, piano
Recorded at the Royal College of
Music London, 2016
Engineer: Martin Phillips
Katie Coventry, mezzo soprano
Lucy Colquhoun, piano
Recorded at RCM Studios 2016
Eunsley Park, violin
Maksim Stsura, piano
Recorded at the RCM Studios in 2016
Eunsley Park, violin
Maksim
Stsura, piano
Recorded at Royal College of Music
Studio 2016
Norbert Meyn, conductor
Alke Quartet
Lewis Tingey double bass
Ben Smith, tenor 1
Pharel Silaban, tenor 2
Nicholas Morton, bass 1
James Atkinson, bass 2
Recorded at Royal College of Music Studio 2016
Alke Quartet
Recorded at Royal College of Music Studio 2016
Alke Quartet
Recorded at Royal College of Music
Studio 2016
Louise Fuller, soprano
Lucy Colquhoun, piano
Recorded at Royal College of Music Studio 2016
Norbert Meyn, producer/coach