Introduction
Max Rostal (7 July 1905 – 6 August 1991) was a violinist and a viola player. He was Austrian-born, but later took British citizenship.
Biography
Max Rostal was born in Cieszyn and studied with Carl Flesch. He also studied theory and composition with Emil Bohnke and Matyás Seiber. He won the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1925. From 1930–33 he taught at the Berlin Hochschule, from 1944 to 1958 at the Guildhall School of Music, and then at the Musikhochschule Köln (1957–82) and the Conservatory in Bern (1957–85). His pupils included Yfrah Neaman, Paulo Bosísio, Howard Leyton-Brown, Igor Ozim, Ole Bohn, Peggy Klinger, Paul Rozeck, Edith Peinemann, Bryan Fairfax and members of the Amadeus Quartet. He died in Bern.
Rostal played a wide variety of music, but was a particular champion of contemporary works such as Béla Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2. He made a number of recordings.
Rostal premiered Alan Bush's Violin Concerto of 1946–8 in 1949. He was the dedicatee of Benjamin Frankel's first solo violin sonata (1942), and he also made the premiere recording.
Rostal played in a piano trio with Heinz Schröter (piano) and Gaspar Cassadó (cello), who was replaced in 1967 by Siegfried Palm.
Rostal edited a number of works for Schott Music, and produced piano reductions as well.
Rostal's daughter Sybil B. G. Eysenck became a psychologist and is the widow of the personality psychologist Hans Eysenck, with whom she collaborated.
Discography
- Benjamin Frankel: Sonata No. 1 for solo violin, Op. 13 (1942) on Decca K 1178
- Frederick Delius: Violin Sonata No. 2, Sir Edward Elgar: Violin Sonata, and Sir William Walton: Violin Sonata (1954 recordings, released 1955-7 on LP on Westminster), reissued on the Testament UKlabel, SBT1319 (2003).
- Maurice Ravel: Sonate fur Violine und Klavier, Marcel Mihalovici: 2.Sonate fur Violine und Klavier op.45 Deutsche Grammophon SLPM 138 016, 1959.
- Violin concertos by Béla Bartók (No. 2), Alban Berg, Bernard Stevens, and Dmitri Shostakovich (No. 1) recorded between 1948 and 1962, released on CD on Symposium Records, UK
- Franz Schubert: Fantasie in C major, D.934, Robert Schumann: Sonata A minor, Op. 105, Claude Debussy: Sonata, Igor Stravinsky: Duo Concertant, Symposium Records, UK
- Johann Sebastian Bach: Sonata in E minor (arranged by Howard Ferguson), Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: Passacaglia, Giuseppe Tartini: Concerto in G minor, Sonata The Devil's Trill, Ludwig van Beethoven: Romances No. 1 and 2, Symposium Records, UK
- Franz Schubert: 3 Sonatas, Op. 137, No. 1-3, Rondo in B minor, Op. 70, D. 895, Sonata in A major, Op. 162, D. 574, Symposium Records, UK
Media
- European Archive Copyright free LP recording of Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata by Max Rostal (violin) and Franz Osborn (piano) at the European Archive (for non-American viewers only).