Walter Goehr (28 May 1903, Berlin - 4 December 1960, Sheffield) was a German composer.
Goehr was born in Berlin where studied with Arnold Schoenberg and embarked on a conducting career, before being forced as a Jew to seek employment outside Germany, while working for Berlin Radio in 1932. He was invited to become music director for the Gramophone Company (later EMI), so he moved to London. As well as teaching composition in Britain, he also instructed pupils in conducting, one of whom was the young Wally Stott, later known as Angela Morley. In England he worked for the Columbia Record Company, and between 1945 and 1948 was conductor of the BBC Theatre Orchestra (the predecessor of today’s BBC Concert Orchestra); he was also a skilled arranger. He was one of many musicians of European origin and training recruited by Michael Tippett to the staff of Morley College. Goehr conducted many important premieres at Morley, including the first British performance of the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610.
His first successful work was Malpopita in 1931, an opera especially designed for being broadcast. This work was scheduled for its first live performance on 6 May 2004, in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg, Abspannwerk Humboldt.
In 1936, only a year after its first performance, he conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the premiere recording of Georges Bizet's Symphony in C.
In 1942, he made a new arrangement of Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, with a subsidiary piano part. In 1946, he arranged a number of Mussorgsky's piano pieces into the orchestral suite Pictures from the Crimea.
He died in the City Hall, Sheffield, United Kingdom, on 4 December 1960, immediately after conducting a performance of Handel's Messiah.
Frank Pelleg
Born: September 24, 1910 - Prague, Austria-Hungary (now Prague, Czech Republic)
Died: September 20, 1968 - Haifa, Israel
The Czech-born Israeli harpsichordist, pianist, conductor, composer and pedagogue, Frank Pelleg [Peleg; born Pollak], studied music in Prague at National Academy of Music (piano, composition, conducting) and musicology at the Prague University. He was a student of Vítčzslav Novak and Alexander Zemlinsky, among others.
Frank Pelleg began appearing in recitals when still very young, performing mostly pre-classical music on the harpsichord and contemporary repertoire on the piano. One of his own early compositions, The Sailor's Ballad for choir and orchestra (to a text by Jiří Wolker) had been performed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra under Václav Talich. During that period he also wrote Three Songs (texts by Horace, Nietzsche, Tagore), Piano Concerto, String Quartet and Piano Quartet.
In 1936 Frank Pelleg immigrated to Eretz-Israel (Palestine). When he came to Israel he changed his name from Pollak to Pelleg, the Hebrew word for Bach, to specify his deep appreciation for the German composer. He won 1st prize at the International Contest of Performing Musicians in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1939. Soon after, his professional life took a wholly new direction. He became extremely active in every aspect of music life in Israel. He travelled and performed all over the country: in provincial towns, rural settlements (kibbutzim) and he carried his harpsichord with him wherever he went. Pelleg appeared with the then Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra, with the Radio Orchestra and with the Haifa Symphony Orchestra both in Israel and on their tours abroad. As a soloist he gained quite a reputation as interpreter of Bach's music.
Georg Friedrich Händel Concerti for Harpsichord and Orchestra No.13, 14, 19
Zurich Radio Orchestra
Frank Pelleg, harpsichord
Conductor: Walter Goehr
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