Fritz Scheel

Johann Friedrich ( Fritz) Ludwig Scheel ( born November 7, 1852 in Fackenburg, † March 13, 1907 in Philadelphia ) was a German - American conductor. He founded the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Life

Origin

Scheel came from a poor family in which, however, apparently inherited a musical talent, because there were several professional musicians out of her, of which Fritz Scheel was the most outstanding and therefore the most is known. He learned from childhood to play different instruments, most perfectly well- the violin, and later piano by Ferdinand David. In the 1870s he was an orchestral musician in Chemnitz and Schwerin, 1880 then music director of the Chemnitz City Orchestra. His musical achievements were recognized, due to differences with the city government and parts of the orchestra but was terminated at the end of March 1889. From Chemnitz Scheel went to Hamburg, where he worked in not completely clarified manner with the famous conductor Hans von Bülow. Because of this ambiguity, it is not to decide whether there is a correlation between the disease-related retirement Bülow from the concert business in the fall of 1892 and Scheel's emigration to the USA in the spring of 1893.

Emigration to the USA

In April 1893 Scheel embarked with one compiled by his orchestra of about 50 musicians in Bremen to " World's Columbian Exposition " in Chicago at a concert in the great (one of the major world exhibitions). After the end of which the orchestra broke up, probably belonged to some of its members but to the " Imperial Vienna Prater Orchestra", with the Scheel then 1894/95 has played on the winter trade shows in San Francisco. His success there encouraged Scheel, to form a 65 -man standing Orchestra, which he led as " San Francisco Symphony Orchestra " to the economically -related resolution of the orchestra in 1899 and with whom he performed regularly.

Founding of the Philadelphia Orchestra

Even in 1899 conducted a Scheel "The New York Orchestra" named orchestra within a summer concert series in Philadelphia. The quality of the concerts led to the fact that music-loving United Philadelphians organized in a Philadelphia Orchestra Association and Scheel responsible for the establishment of an orchestra. On November 16, 1900 Scheel conducted the first performance of the newly formed Philadelphia Orchestra. In the following years, he established the first such professional orchestra, in a time over a million inhabitants city that was culturally influenced heavily by German influences in particular. Scheel recruited on two trips in 1901 and 1902 in Europe capable musicians for the new orchestra, including his brother Julius, with whom he had already given the first concert (along with the later well-known, especially in the United States solo pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch ). With this recruitment practice Scheel made ​​his mark among residents, some already quasi- unionized musicians quite enemies. However, the quality of his orchestral work and the public success of his concerts held the patrons of the orchestra on its side. Special support was described as the attractive conductor whose wife had stayed behind with the children in Germany, apparently in the influential upper-class women wreaths.

Rise and early death

In the aftermath Scheels orchestra rose quickly to become a recognized also from the sophisticated New Yorker criticism orchestras and has appeared in surrounding cities, but also in New York. As a special honor Scheel felt it that he was allowed to play with a part of the orchestra for an official purpose in the White House in Washington when President Theodore Roosevelt. Since Scheel's orchestra to a large extent of German origin, German was therefore used as a sample language, the presumption is not pulled out of thin air that Roosevelt was not accidental, under the right of this orchestra was loaded: he was compared to his predecessors and successors, the " German friendly " the American president at that time.

The rise Scheel found in 1907 by an end that his behavior could recognize signs of mental illness; you wrote to be suffering a revision of restless people, obviously it was but an organic brain disease that led to death in the same year, ie before the age of 55.

Work

Scheel may well be regarded as a typical representative of the German Kapellmeister tradition (as which it also Arthur Rubinstein described, which in 1906 made ​​his American debut in New York with him), who was a good orchestral trainer and his "craft" dominated. Its programming was musically sophisticated, preferred the German repertoire and made ​​little concessions to popular taste. Well-known soloists such as Fritz Kreisler and pianist and composer Edward MacDowell appeared below him, and it testifies to the acquired in a short time good reputation of the orchestra that Richard Strauss conducted in four concerts in 1904 with his own works.

Scheel is almost completely unknown in the German music history, and the only article in a recent music lexicon makes partly misleading information. In American work on the history of American orchestras, however, he does not remain unmentioned, and especially in Philadelphia, he is a founding conductor of the top American orchestras scoring Philadelphia Orchestra in memory that also by a eponymous orchestra hall and in the " Academy of Music" aufbewahrtes, is kept alive in 1908 elaborately designed bronze relief.

Scheel has probably written time usual orchestral arrangements, but there has only been a known pressure.