Identity area
Reference code
GB GB1179 AB-AB/920
Title
Photocopy of an autograph letter signed from Adolph Brodsky to Edward Elgar
Date(s)
- [20th cent] (Creation)
Level of description
Item
Extent and medium
1 item, 3 folios
Context area
Name of creator
(1851-1929)
Biographical history
Adolph Brodsky was born in 1851 in Taganrog on the Sea of Azov. At the age of not quite five, he began to play the violin and later became a pupil of Hellmesberger at the Vienna Conservatoire. In 1880 he married Anna Tskadowska in Sebastopol in the Crimea. The following year Brodsky became the first person to play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, declared unplayable by Leopold Auer to whom the original dedication was made. From 1883 to 1891 Brodsky taught at the Leipzig Conservatoire and established the Brodsky Quartet. In October 1891 Adolph and Anna Brodsky sailed for New York . After a very strenuous three years as concertmaster and soloist with the New York Symphony Orchestra under Walter Damrosch, Brodsky decided to return to Europe. When in Berlin, Adolph Brodsky received a letter from Sir Charles Hallé inviting him to teach at the recently founded Royal Manchester College of Music and to lead the Hallé Orchestra. Although Brodsky received offers of work from St. Petersburg, Berlin and Cologne and despite his wife's misgivings, Brodsky accepted the Manchester post. Within weeks of Brodsky's arrival in Manchester in 1895, Hallé died and Brodsky took over as principal of the College, a position which he held until his death in 1929.
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Scope and content
This letter is a reminder to Dr. Elgar of what happened at an interview between Brodsky and Elgar at the Grand Hotel, Manchester. Brodsky invites Elgar to become Professor of Instrumentation and Composition at the Royal Manchester College of Music and the same in the Music Faculty at the Victoria University. Both institutions can offer four hundred pounds. Elgar would have time to travel and to compose. The original is dated 5 Apr 1904, and it is unclear when this photocopy was made.
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Open