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The Austrian composer and cellist and music teacher, Ludwig Lebell, studied with Popper and Bruckner at the Vienna Conservatoire, before settling in England. By 1914 he was working at Trinity College of Music where he remained, teaching cello and coaching chamber music classes, until his death some forty years later in September 1954. Harold Rutland, Trinity’s biographer, noted the ‘conspicuous success’ Lebell had as a chamber music coach and cited Wilfrid Perry, a contemporary, as saying Lebell was the finest teacher of chamber music he had ever known.
Ludwig Lebell was also apparently a prolific composer of cello music, writing works for cello and piano, technical studies and pieces for beginners. He also transcribed some J.S. Bach's works into piano, including two artia from Cantata BWV 82. He based his own arrangement on the bass version of the aria, the dark timbre of which also leaves its mark on the piano sonorities, with Lebell focussing entirely on the middle register of the two pianos and avoiding their extreme registers. He foreshortens J.S. Bach's da capo form (ABA), even dispensing with an entire theme in the B-section and omitting a number of repeats that may well be motivated by the words in the original work. From a purely instrumental point of view the music can certainly endure this treatment, with its greater concentration and emphasis. |
