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Sauer, Emil von (1862-1942)

Emil von Sauer

born: 8 October 1862
died: 27 April 1942
country: Germany

Music reference books these days tend to jump from Sarasate and Satie to Sauret (sometimes) and Sax, quite omitting Sauer. Those that do include him and were published before 1917 list him as Emil Georg Konrad Sauer. After that date, he added the aristocratic ‘von’ to his name, having been made a hereditary knight by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Hence the title page of the present concerto, premiered in Berlin in 1902—with Richard Strauss, no less, conducting—has the name of its composer as plain Emil Sauer.

A brief outline of his career reveals that he was born in Hamburg on 8 October 1862. His father was a merchant and accomplished organist, while his mother Julia (née Gordon) Sauer, of Scottish ancestry, was a skilled pianist who had studied in Hamburg with the renowned pedagogue Ludwig Deppe (1828-1890). It was with her that Emil began his piano studies at the age of five. Thereafter, his lessons were held at the Moscow Conservatoire with Nicolai Rubinstein (to whom Sauer’s first piano concerto is dedicated) and, from 1884 when he was already a finished artist, with Liszt for two summers in Weimar.

A triumphant Berlin debut in 1885 established his name in Europe. He taught advanced pupils at the Vienna Conservatory from 1901 to 1907, and made two visits to America in 1898-99 and 1908. For more than five decades, Sauer was among the world’s most eminent pianists, yet his name is never included in the pantheon of so-called ‘Golden Age’ pianists such as Hofmann, Rachmaninov, Godowsky and Rosenthal. Hofmann himself, comparing him to other Liszt pupils, stated that ‘Sauer was a truly great virtuoso; Lamond did not impress me, and Friedheim was: so-so-la-la’. Mark Hambourg, one of Leschetizky’s greatest pupils, averred in 1954: ‘I do not suppose that any pianist today could play … with greater elegance than Emil Sauer.’ As can be heard on his recordings made between about 1923 and 1941, Sauer’s technique did not diminish with age, though by the late 1930s his career was on the wane, overtaken by a new generation of pianists. He died in Vienna on 27 April 1942. (For a more detailed account of his life and career, you are referred to the booklet note by Steven Heliotes that accompanies Hyperion’s recording of the Piano Concerto No 1, CDA66790.)

from notes by Jeremy Nicholas © 2024

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