Richard Mohaupt

Richard Ernst Eduard Mohaupt was born on 14 September 1904 in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland). He received his musical education in his native city, studying piano, composition and counterpoint with Rudolf Bilke and conducting with Julius Prüwer. He began his professional career at an early age and worked as a répétiteur and conductor at theatres in Aachen, Weimar and Breslau.
In 1931–32 Mohaupt undertook a concert tour through the Soviet Union as a pianist and conductor. After his return he settled in Berlin, where he also worked for the UFA film company. Although he had already composed several stage works, including the early opera "El-Armanas Erbe" (1923) and "Aufruhr in Burleskien" (1932), his first major public success as a composer came in 1936 with the ballet "Die Gaunerstreiche der Courasche", based on Grimmelshausen. The work was premiered in Berlin during the ballet festival organized as part of the cultural programme surrounding the 1936 Olympic Games.
Mohaupt's success was soon overshadowed by increasing difficulties with the National Socialist cultural authorities. His modern musical language, including prominent rhythmic and jazz-influenced elements, led to accusations of “Musikbolschewismus” (“musical Bolshevism”). His situation was further complicated by his marriage to the Russian-Jewish violinist Rosa Gottlieb. Mohaupt was excluded from the Reichsmusikkammer in 1937, although in August of that year he received a temporary and revocable special permission to continue working.
This permission made possible the premiere of his opera "Die Wirtin von Pinsk", with a libretto by Kurt Naue loosely based on Goldoni's La locandiera. Karl Böhm conducted the premiere at the Dresden State Opera on 10 February 1938. Despite its successful reception, the work was immediately attacked by National Socialist critics, particularly for its jazz-influenced rhythms and musical style, and further performances were prohibited. The controversy surrounding the opera, together with the increasing persecution resulting from Mohaupt's marriage to a Jewish woman, effectively ended his professional prospects in Germany.
In the spring of 1939 Richard and Rosa Mohaupt emigrated to the United States and settled in New York. The different economic structure of American musical life made it difficult for him to continue concentrating primarily on opera and ballet, and during his exile he increasingly turned to orchestral music. He also worked as a music teacher and wrote music for film, radio and, later, television.
One of the first important works of his American period was "Town Piper Music", composed around 1940 and first performed on New York radio in 1941. It became Mohaupt's most widely performed orchestral composition and was taken up by numerous conductors in Europe and the United States. His Symphony No. 1 “Rhythm and Variations”, written in 1939–40, was premiered in New York under Eugene Goossens in 1942. In the following year Leopold Stokowski and the NBC Symphony Orchestra gave the premiere of his Concerto for Orchestra (Based on Red Army Themes). Mohaupt's orchestral career in the United States culminated in the premiere of his Violin Concerto on 29 April 1954, performed by Michael Rabin with the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos.
Despite the increasing importance of orchestral music in his output, Mohaupt did not abandon the stage. During his American years he composed the opera buffa "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten", written during the 1940s and premiered in Bremen on 15 June 1949. His dance burlesque "Max und Moritz", based on Wilhelm Busch and created in collaboration with the choreographer Alfredo Bortoluzzi, was premiered at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe on 18 December 1949. Another opera, "Double Trouble" (Die Zwillings-Komödie), with a libretto by Roger Maren after Plautus, received its premiere in Louisville, Kentucky, on 4 December 1954.
In 1955 Mohaupt returned permanently to Europe and settled in Austria. During his final years he renewed his contacts with the German musical and theatrical world and continued composing. Among his late works was "Banchetto musicale" for twelve solo instruments and orchestra, premiered in Berlin in 1956. He also completed the one-act opera "Der grüne Kakadu", based on Arthur Schnitzler's play, but did not live to see its premiere.
Richard Mohaupt died on 3 July 1957 in Reichenau an der Rax (Austria).

Piano concerto

In my possession is an autograph manuscript by Richard Mohaupt of his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in the composer's own reduction for two pianos.
Mohaupt composed the concerto in 1938, and the original version received its world premiere in Warsaw in the same year. In 1950 Mohaupt prepared a revised version of the concerto. The revised version received its world premiere on 28 June 1951 at the 25th World Music Days festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM/IGNM) in Frankfurt am Main. The soloist was the German pianist Helmut Roloff, accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk Stuttgart under Hans Müller-Kray.
The autograph two-piano reduction in my collection was formerly in the possession of Helmut Roloff. Since the two-piano reduction was made by Mohaupt himself, and Roloff was the soloist in the first performance of the revised version in 1951, it seems very likely that this manuscript was prepared or supplied to Roloff in connection with the rehearsals and performance of the concerto in Frankfurt.
The composer's reduction for two pianos was subsequently published in New York by Associated Music Publishers.