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The German conductor, Carl Mathieu Lange, came from a musician and theater family in the Rhineland (he did not worn his first name Carl since 1950). He gained his first experience as a theater Kapellmeister at the Oper Köln and in Münster and then came to Göttingen as General Music Director (GMD. From there he went as an opera director and music director to Hannover until the opera house was destroyed by bombs. After the war, he began again as General Music Director in the Darmstadt Orangerie, the alternative quarter of the Landestheaters Darmstadt, whose house had been destroyed in the war.
Even then, Mathieu Lange chose his forgotten works for his performances. In Göttingen it was u. a. Alessandro Scarlatti's Il Trionfo dell'Onore (for Germany the first performance of A. Scarlatti opera), as well as Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (German premiere) and - also an excavation of Lange's - Luigi Cherubini's opera Démophoon. In Darmstadt, completely devastated by the war in 1945, Mathieu Lange and Wolfgang Steinecke played a decisive role in the construction of the International Summer Course for New Music, as he allowed composers of contemporary music to speak, even later. As a musical director for opera, symphony and choir concerts, he came to a high reputation. In 1948 Walter Felsenstein brought him to the Komische Oper in East Berlin. Already in 1941-1942 Berlin's Deutsches Opernhaus had invited him for guest performances.
In 1950 Mathieu Lange was appointed to succeed Georg Schumann as director of the Berliner Singakademie (Sing-Akademie zu Berlin). For the first time on the conductor's rostrum, he was there already on 20 November 1949 at the Johannes Brahms Requiem. (Georg Schumann was acting director until his death in 1952). In Berlin, Lange devoted himself to intensive work with the Sing-Akademie and other musical tasks: In the tribune he presented in the end of 1950 Igor Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat in a remarkable series of over 60 performances; In 1951, Boris Blacher's Romeo und Julia was heard in the same theater and, a year later, the world premiere of Wolfgang Fortner's pantomime Die Witwe von Ephesus. At the Berliner Festwochen in 1952, he brought out Claudio Monteverdi's Marienvesper as a German premiere, 1953 at Hebbeltheater The Coronation of the Poppaea. At the Berliner Festwochen he led - a small sensation - discovered by him, until then unknown sensational works of 13-year-old Felix Mendelssohn.
Work as director of the Berliner Singakademie included: Annual performances of J.S. Bach's oratorios on traditional holidays (Matthäus-Passion BWV 244, Mass in B minor BWV 232, Weihnachts-Oratorium BWV 248), performances of well-known works from the great choral literature, and much more. a. Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, George Frideric Handel, Joseph Haydn, W.A. Mozart, Robert Schumann, Igor Stravinsky, as well as performances of almost forgotten works, such as Die Israeliten in der Wüste by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and sensational premieres by Joseph Haydn, Claudio Monteverdi, Otto Nicolai, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Giacomo Puccini, Alessandro Scarlatti and the world premiere of Te Deum by the young Georges Bizet, which had previously disappeared and was discovered by Mathieu Lange in Paris, as well as performances of contemporary works, such as Max Baumann's Deutsche Vesper, Hans Werner Henze's Musen Siziliens (commissioned composition) outline the broad repertoire of Lange. The accompanying orchestras alternated with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester-Berlin. Concert tours took him to home and abroad, for example to Sweden, France or Poland.
What Mathieu Lange did culturally in a quarter of a century, was honored by the awarding of the Music Prize of the German Critics (1952), the Bundesverdienstkreuzes am Bande (September 18, 1967) and the Händel-Ringes (1971). Lange's broad-based work is also evidenced by recordings and several recordings, in particular by Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR).
Mathieu Lange was married to actress Elli Hall. |
