Prof. Josef Wolfsthal

Josef Wolfsthal was a renowned Jewish musician. He was a descendant of the famous Wolfsthal family of musicians from Galicia, son of Lazar the music teacher, and brother of Max, a talented musician in his own right. Josef's family moved to Vienna several years before Josef was born, seeking opportunities for a better life. The background of the family's move to Vienna and the part Josef's brother played in rising from poverty are described in this article in the Evening Star article (NZ, 1903).

Several years later, Josef's family moved from Vienna to live in Berlin, where from age 10 to 16 he studied with Carl Flesch, a prominent violin teacher. In the memoirs of Carl Flesch, he referenced Josef as the "most outstanding representative who came from the Wolfsthal Polish family of musicians". At age 16 he started to perform in public and gave concerts in Berlin (1916), Lodz (1917), Paris (1925), Holland (1926), and other venues in Germany and across Europe. At the advice of Carl Flesch, Josef took an orchestral post in 1919 as the first concertmaster with the Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra, and shortly thereafter, during the 1920/21 season, he worked in the same capacity for the Stockholm Concert Society. At the age of 21, Josef returned to Berlin as a concertmaster in the prestigious Berlin National Opera. At the age of 26, he became a professor at the Academy of Music in Berlin (the youngest musician to ever be appointed to such a post by the Academy).

Josef was a free-spirited musician [from Virtuozo book]
He readily played classic music in creative ways that defied the common music wisdom of his time.
"It will be the task of Beethoven specialists to examine Wolfsthal's variants closely" (1930)

Josef was married twice. In 1923 he married Ruth (nee Landau) Pola in Berlin. The couple separated, and in 1929 Josef married Olga, the former wife of his colleague, George Szell.

Josef died at the age of 31 due to untreated pneumonia. A death notice published by the family in Neue Freie Presse is indicative of Josef's short and successful career, which was also extensively documented in the music literature and the international press. Sample sources on this profile attest to the fame of Josef.

Vehicle information on file.

For more background on Josef's unique music qualities see article with bio by Tully Potter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Wolfsthal

Josef Wolfsthal (12 June 1899 – 3 February 1931), born Josef Wolfthal, was an Austrian violinist and a professor in Germany's capital Berlin.

He was born into a musical family of Galician origin in Vienna. His father and his older brother Max (born 1896) both played the violin. His father was an excellent violin teacher and gave his sons their first lessons on that instrument. He also taught Sigmund Feuermann (1900–1952). From the age of 10, Wolfsthal studied for six years with famed Hungarian violin teacher Carl Flesch, and at age 16 started to perform in public. His debut was on April 7, 1916, with Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Camillo Hildebrand (1876–1953). There he performed the Concerto for 2 Violins in D minor, BWV 1043 by Johann Sebastian Bach with his teacher Carl Flesch, who then encouraged him to gain some experience as an orchestral player to make him a more disciplined ensemble player. In that capacity, he played in the first performance of Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss, and in the first recording of Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme by Strauss, conducted by the composer in Berlin.

Wolfsthal then moved to Bremen, where he succeeded Georg Kulenkampff (1898–1948) as concertmaster. Later he moved to the Swedish capital Stockholm and then back to Berlin as concertmaster of one of the two outstanding orchestras in the German capital in the interwar period, the Berlin State Opera orchestra (the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was the other), where he became a protégé of Richard Strauss, who often conducted this orchestra. When he was only 26, he was made a violin professor at Music Academy in Berlin. Some of his students were Szymon Goldberg (1909–1993) and Marianne Liedtke, who later named herself Maria Lidka (1914–2013) after emigrating to the United Kingdom.

Wolfsthal gave the premiere of Karl Weigl's 1928 Violin Concerto. He played in a distinguished string trio with cellist Emmanuel Feuermann and violist and composer Paul Hindemith in which his pupil Goldberg succeeded him after his death and led the group in recordings for Columbia of Beethoven's Serenade Op. 8 and Hindemith's String Trio No. 2.

Wolfsthal had already made some recordings in the 1920s. In 1928, he became deputy head of the orchestra of Krolloper Berlin, which was led by Otto Klemperer. There he took part in the premiere of Kammermusik No. 5, op. 36 no. 4 by Hindemith. He formed a trio with pianist Leonid Kreutzer and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. The latter recommended him as a violin teacher to the young Marianne Liedtke. But when Wolfsthal was engaged to accompany young piano virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz, his lack of discipline betrayed him when, while performing for Piatigorsky's manager, he abruptly stopped accompanying in midstream and started to improvise, laughing boyishly.

He married Olga, the former wife of George Szell (see details in Szell's biography), who bore him a daughter. After attending a funeral in Berlin in the winter of 1930, he caught a cold which escalated to pneumonia several weeks later and took his life at only 31. His wife later married the cellist Benar Heifetz (1899–1974), older brother of renowned violinist Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987).

Wolfsthal's sound has been described as "tightly concentrated" and "sweet"; his style—which eschewed portamenti—as having a "spruce modernity". Reviewing Wolfsthal's 1929 recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, the Penguin guide to compact discs wrote of his "breathtaking mastery, making one regret that this pupil of Carl Flesch died in his early thirties."

MyHeritage reference: Biographical Summaries of Notable People - SmartCopy

Family Ties
In 1899, one of the witnesses who was physically present to certify the birth of Josef Wolfsthal was Arnold Wolfsthal, his uncle (details with profile owner).

Source for Bibliography (1929)
Erich Hermann Müller, Deutsches Musiker-Lexikon, Wilhelm Limpert Verlag, Dresden, 1929

https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWiki/Josef_Wolfsthal

Josef performed in the Schierke summer festival in 1925 - include in the text?