This past June, contrabassist Ludwig Streicher would have turned 100. His birthday was observed by the odd radio segment, and there were also plans for a memorial concert at the Vienna Musikverein (now postponed until next year due to the COVID-19 crisis). Thorough attention has been paid to Streicher\u2019s biography, from his beginnings as a solo bassist and solo cellist in Krak\u00f3w to his international career as a soloist with all the attendant anecdotes, and all of the various assessments of Streicher\u2019s personality have\u2014with good reason\u2014been very much in agreement regarding his exceptional status as a musician, as a pioneer of solo performance on the contrabass, and as an eminent and influential pedagogue. But despite all this, I do still feel a need to make my own statement\u2014both as his successor at the mdw and as someone who was a member of his (still rather small) class here in the 1970s. My concern is for nothing less than his musical legacy.<\/p>\n
Alongside his orchestral playing and teaching, Ludwig Streicher was also exceptionally active as a soloist. But beyond this fantastic musician\u2019s powerful stage presence and his widely noted talent for showmanship, he was above all a meticulous worker. And as such, he was constantly working to refine his interpretations both musically and technically. In the process, he would alter minor details and sometimes even produce entirely new versions of his repertoire. It\u2019s with admirable industriousness that Streicher would rewrite his solo parts again and again, periodically sending one of his students to the library\u2014the home of that era\u2019s only photocopier (\u201chere are ten schillings, go over to Herr J\u00fcnger\u2026\u201d)\u2014in order to duplicate the new edition. As far as he was concerned, his newest version would then be the only one that was valid: Streicher would insist quite relentlessly in his notoriously authoritarian style that it be followed down to the very last detail. And if you then had the misfortune of showing up to your lesson with an outdated version of a piece, his fury was certain.<\/p>\n
As a result of this practice of constant renewal, ever-new versions of his entire teaching repertoire\u2014both solo pieces and orchestral passages\u2014entered circulation, and these were repeatedly copied and handed down over many decades. It\u2019s thus the case today that many of Streicher\u2019s students (covering multiple generations and scattered across the world) have copies of his handwritten solo parts from the pieces in our repertoire\u2014from the most varied periods, of course. And unfortunately, it’s also the case that many of them view whatever versions they happen to have as sacrosanct, set in stone, as if they feared bringing down upon them the posthumous ire of their master. Only few have had the courage to make changes despite such fears.<\/p>\n
The independent search for one\u2019s own interpretation, for technical solutions that might work better for one\u2019s own self, is something that often gets neglected. And if one considers the way in which Streicher himself worked, which was characterised by constant efforts toward both musical and technical improvement, one will necessarily come to the conclusion that a rigid attitude simply doesn\u2019t do justice to Streicher\u2019s musical ideals and technical approach. So if one desires not to \u201cworship the ashes\u201d, but instead \u201cpreserve the fire\u201d, one simply can\u2019t go on eternally replicating a coincidental snapshot from the long career of an individual musician. Treating Ludwig Streicher\u2019s legacy with dignity and upholding his musical ideals can only entail always continuing to work on the repertoire, continuing to refine one\u2019s own interpretations, and continuing to search for and try out new technical solutions\u2014just like Streicher himself did his entire life long.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This past June, contrabassist Ludwig S\ufefftreicher would have turned 100. His birthday was observed by \ufeffthe odd radio segment, and there were also plans for a memorial concert at the Vienna Musikverein (\ufeffnow postponed until next year due to the C\ufeffOVID-19 crisis).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1020,1072,1071,1073,66],"class_list":["post-5085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-2020-3","tag-josefniederhammer","tag-ludwigstreicher","tag-teacher","tag-mdw"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5085"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5311,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5085\/revisions\/5311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}