Kurt Kreiser
Emil Kurt Kreiser was born on 4 June 1891 in Dresden (Germany). He attended school in Dresden and finished the Gymnasium Dreikönigschule in 1910. He first studied chemistry at the university of Dresden, but was dissatisfied with the discipline and so switched to more fundamental subjects like philosophy, literature and art history to find his main interest. This main subject of interest became music and so Kurt Kreiser moved to Leipzig in 1915 and started his music studies under Hugo Riemann, Arthur Prüfer and Arnold Schering. In 1917 Kurt Kreiser finished his studies with a doctoral thesis about the Dresden composer Carl Gottlieb Reissiger.
After his studies Kurt Kreiser worked as journalist and music critic for newspapers and journals. He also was music teacher at the König-Georg-Schule in Dresden. It is also known that Kurt Kreiser conducted the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra several times and that he composed music.
Kurt Kreiser died during the bombing of Dresden on 13 February 1945.
Among the compositions by Kurt Kreiser are Fantasy for voices and orchestra "Vita", a march for mandolin orchestra, an ouverture to the operetta "Der Graf von Rüdesheim", a Polonaise for piano, a Rhapsody for piano "Freiheit", a march for piano "Braun, Weiss, Rot", songs like "Lied der Elbschiffer", "Träumersang" or "Die Amsel".
He also was co-author of a book on the composer Reinhold Becker, but is today best known for his still important book von Carl Gottlieb Reissiger.
In my possession is a privately printed score of an "Adagio for violin and piano" by Kurt Kreiser. The work is dedicated "in memoriam to my beloved parents". My copy has a personal inscription by Kurt Kreiser dated "Dresden, 6.5.1943", so the work was composed before that date but the exact year is uncertain. I found no other copy of this work in libraries and it is very likely that the complete edition is of small number and most of it was surely destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in 1945. For that reason I present here the score for information purposes:
