Felix Otto Dessoff
Felix Otto Dessoff ( born January 14, 1835 in Leipzig, † October 28, 1892 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German composer and conductor.
Life
Dessoff came from a Jewish cloth merchant family and received his education from 1851 to 1854 at the Conservatory of Leipzig, where he became friends with Johannes Brahms.
He received his first job at Actien Theater in Chemnitz. After that, he was successively director of music in Altenburg, Dusseldorf, Kassel, Aachen and Magdeburg. Appointed in 1860 as Hofopernkapellmeister to Vienna, where he received a year later a job as a teacher of composition at the Conservatory of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna (predecessor of the Vienna Academy of Music). In Vienna, he taught, among others, Arthur Nikisch, Felix Mottl, Ernst von Schuch, Heinrich von Herzogenberg, Adolf Wallnoefer and Robert Fuchs. He was conductor of the Vienna Court Opera from 1862 to 1875 and was conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic subscription.
In 1875 he accepted an offer to go as conductor of the Grand Ducal Baden court orchestra in Karlsruhe, where he succeeded Hermann Levi. On November 4, 1876, he conducted the first performance of Brahms Symphony No. 1 in Karlsruhe. In 1877 he led the first Salzburg Music Festival.
In 1880 he accepted an appointment to the newly created office of the "First Kapellmeister " at the Frankfurt Opera. The newly completed opera house he opened on October 20, 1880 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni.
As a composer, he has made himself known by piano, chamber music and vocal works that stylistically lean primarily at Brahms.
Decades after his sudden death on October 28, 1892 in Frankfurt am Main was Dessoff as one of the leading conductors of his time. After the seizure of power by the Nazis he was defamed as a Jew, his work and its significance for the history of music were forgotten. Only after the Second World War, there was a re-evaluation and rediscovery. 2005, he devoted an exhibition to the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt.
His daughter Margarete Dessoff was choir director in Frankfurt and New York. The tomb of Otto Dessoff is located in the main cemetery in Frankfurt am Main. In Vienna Liesing ( 23rd district ) the Dessoffgasse in 1955 named after him.
Works (excerpt)
- Op 2 three piano pieces
- Op 3 Sonata for Pianoforte
- Op 7 String Quartet in F major (1878 )
- Op 8 Five Songs for medium voice with piano accompaniment
- String Quintet op.10 in G major (1878 )
- String Quartet in E major op.11