An intersting release fromt the Bavarian library of a composer I've haven't seen before...Acht Fantasiestücke für Pianoforte ; op. 10 by Ernst Rudorff...
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Rgards
Fred
From Grove:
Rudorff, Ernst (Friedrich Karl)
(b Berlin, 18 Jan 1840; d Berlin, 31 Dec 1916). German conductor, composer, pianist and teacher. He grew up in an intellectual and artistic environment: his mother, Betty Pistor, had been a friend of Mendelssohn and a pupil of Zelter, while his father was a professor of law in Berlin and a pupil of Friedrich Carl von Savigny. His parents' house was frequented by representatives of the Romantic school, and Johann Friedrich Reichardt and Ludwig Tieck were among his ancestors. He studied piano and composition with Woldemar Bargiel (1850–57), violin with Louis Ries (1852–4) and piano for a short time with Clara Schumann in 1858, with whom from then on he shared a life-long friendship. He studied theology and history at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig (1859–60) and music at the conservatory in Leipzig (1859–61), mainly with Moscheles (piano) and Julius Rietz (composition) and then in private lessons with Reinecke and Hauptmann (1861–2).
He worked as conductor and assistant of Julius Stockhausen in Hamburg, then taught and conducted at the conservatory in Cologne (1865–9), where he founded a Bach society in 1867. On the invitation of Joachim he was made professor at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1869–1910), where, from 1882, he headed the piano and organ class. He succeeded Bruch as conductor of the Stern Choral Society (1880–90). He conducted many concerts with the Berlin PO and also in Lisbon in 1887, and was a member of the senate of the Royal Academy of the Arts. He was also a founder of the environmental protection movement.
Rudorff's style as a composer was based on that of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, and above all Weber. The influence of Schumann is particularly clear in his early piano works and songs, although he soon developed a personal style. In his orchestral works, early piano compositions and songs he uses traditional forms but incorporates moments of Romantic unpredictability. His late piano pieces, such as op.52, display more continuous thematic development. He rigorously rejected hollow virtuosity and superficial smoothness. His fondness for detail resulted sometimes in a very convoluted melodic line, harmonic obscuration, abrupt transitions and chains of sound, and complicated rhythms. Many pieces, such as the orchestral Variations on an Original Theme op.24, met with wide appreciation during his lifetime.
A distinguished editor, Rudorff was a member of the editorial committee of Denkmäler Deutscher Tonkunst. Among other works he edited the score of Weber's Euryanthe (1866), parts of the Breitkopf & Härtel collected editions of Mozart and Chopin, and the letters of Weber to Hinrich Lichtenstein (Berlin, 1900).
