Edition Ludwig Hoelscher, Vol. 8 [LIVE]

After his teachers, Wilhelm Lamping, Hugo Becker and Julius Kiengel, Ludwig Hoelscher was the most important German cellist of the 20th century. He was born in 1907, the son of a Solingen jeweller, and his meteoric career began in 1930 in Berlin where, after winning the Mendelssohn Prize, he became a member of the Elly Ney trio along with the violinist Wilhelm Stross. Wilhelm Furtwangler organised Hoelscher's first appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic and at the age of twenty-nine, the cellist was appointed one of the youngest professors at the Berlin academy of music. From this point on, Hoelscher's tours took him to almost all countries of the world. Despite his solo career, he remained the ideal chamber musician and, as a member of the Strub Quartet and in a trio together with Walter Gieseking and Gerhard Taschner, earned himself a reputation as the "Faustus" of the cello. As the most outstanding cellist of his generation, he gave the first performances of more than thirty works by composers such as Pfitzner, David, Fortner, Henze, Holler, Krenek, Sutermeister, Trapp, Genzmer and Bialas. He also gave a number of works by Hindemith their first performance. In addition to Furtwangler, the conductors Hoelscher has worked with include Fricsay, Bohm, Cluytens, Enesco, Georgescu, Karajan, Kempe, Knappertsbusch, Jochum, Stokowski, Sanzogno and Scherchen. In the course of his teaching, Hoelscher followed his work in Berlin with more than twenty years at the Academy in Stuttgart and he has trained a whole series of excellent soloists and leading cellists. Ludwig Hoelscher's style was characterized by profound, expressive interpretation, which makes him the unmistakable heir to a great German musical tradition. He died in 1996 at Tutzing, nearly 89 years old.(2 CDs)