ANATOL VON ROESSEL WELTE-MIGNON PIANO ROLLS CDR

 

ANATOL VON ROESSEL (BUDAPEST, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, NOVEMBER 4, 1877 – OBER-HAMBACH, TODAY HEPPENHEIM (BERGSTRAßE), OCTOBER 30, 1967)

 

 

 

 

His father was Austrian, his mother Russian, and one of his grandmothers was Alsatian. His father was also a concert pianist and from 1877 to 1878 he was a student of Franz Liszt, who was also the godfather of Anatol von Roessel. Soon after Anatol’s birth, the family moved to Odessa, where the father had become the Imperial Russian Music Director. Roessel was raised Russian Orthodox. He grew up trilingual, in addition to Russian, German and Ukrainian, French was added at high school, which he soon mastered perfectly. After graduating from high school in Odessa, he gave concerts in southern Russia to get the funds to study at the Leipzig Conservatory. In 1905 he was invited several times to record a total of 25 pieces for the Welte-Mignon reproduction piano. In Leipzig he studied with the famous pianist Alfred Reisenauer . He completed his studies at the end of 1904 and won the Mozart Prize there. Reisenauer appointed him the only assistant at his master school, where he worked until Reisenauer’s early death in 1907. He apparently went to Erfurt shortly thereafter. According to press reports, he performed for the first time on November 14, 1907 at the Erfurt Musikverein. In 1913 the “Erfurter Allgemeineanzeiger” recognized his 25th concert. From 1910 to 1914 he was head of the training class at the Erfurt “Akademie der Tonkunst” at Gartenstraße 52. He also undertook concert tours through Germany, France, Sweden and Russia, where he achieved significant pianistic successes. It is conceivable that in March 1913, when he was saying farewell with the director of the Erfurt Conservatory, the music teacher Walter Hansmann (1875-1963), in the hall of the “Europäischer Hof” on Meister-Eckehart-Strasse, he entered private life withdrew. He obviously did not have to take part in the First World War. In any case, from May to November 1914 he worked as a builder and had a villa built in Erfurt’s best residential area, which he largely designed himself. The money for building the house at Cyriakstraße 21 apparently came from his father-in-law. His name was not only Müller, but he was also the miller at the Kartäusermühle (Erfurt) . The proceeds from the sale of the mill to Adolf Filß probably made it possible for his daughter Anna, who had married Anatol, to finance it. In any case, in 1925 he sold the house on Cyriakstrasse to the pianist and officer’s widow von Dosky, left Erfurt and went to Paris. Roessel was a Russian citizen but became stateless in Russia after the October Revolution. In Paris he worked as a music critic. He wrote for the international music press, including the magazine L’art musical and was a correspondent for the Neue Magazin für Musik, he was also vice-president of the Critique étrangère en France. Divorced in the meantime, he returned to Germany in July 1939 to settle private matters. Here he also experienced the outbreak of war in September 1939. In 1940 he went back to Paris for a short time, but soon withdrew to the Bavarian countryside, deprived of his livelihood. As a stateless person, his status in Nazi Germany was not easy. The internationally renowned musician and critic found refuge in the Landschulheim Neubeuern near Rosenheim, where he worked as a piano teacher and concertmaster. In 1941, the National Socialists closed the boarding school as “politically unreliable”. At the invitation of the Odenwald School he was able to move to Ober-Hambach in the same year to also work as a piano teacher there. Roessel worked in the Odenwald School until old age, his livelihood was secured by the school community.

 

 

TRACKLIST

 

195 CHOPIN – Etude, Op. 25, No. 7, c#

234 RACHMANINOFF – “Fantasy Pieces”, Op. 3, No. 2, c# Prelude

303 BRAHMS – Rhapsody, Op. 79, No. 1, b

304 LISZT – Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5, e “Héroide-Elégiaque”

305 MOSZKOWSKI – GODOWSKY – Spanish Dance, Op. 21, No. 3, f#

307 TCHAIKOVSKY – Tender Reproaches, Op. 72, No. 3, c#

309 J. STRAUSS, JR. – GOLDSTEIN – (Thousan d & One Nights, Op. 346)

503 REBIKOV – Chanson triste (Song of Sadness) Op. 6, No. 2

507 TCHAIKOVSKY – Berceuse (Cradle Song) Op. 72, No. 2, Ab

1040 TCHAIKOVSKY – Theme and Variations, Op. 19, No. 6, F

1045 SCHUMANN-LISZT – Widmung (Dedication) Op. 25, No. 1

1046 GLAZOUNOV – Gavotte, Op. 49, No. 3, D

1265 GRIEG – Norwegian Dance, Op. 35, No. 2, A