Alfred-Grünfeld-Gasse
1090 Alsergrund
€ 10,00
Pages: 16 + cover
Edition: 5 + artists copy (first edition)
Date: 2020
Film: Revolog Tesla 2
Camera: Olympus mju II
5 in stock
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Alfred-Grünfeld-Gasse, named in 1925 after the pianist, composer and music teacher Alfred Grünfeld (July 4, 1852 – January 4, 1924).
Grünfeld was the son of a leather dealer. He received his first music lessons at the age of four.
Alfred Grünfeld studied with Josef Krejčí at the Prague Conservatory and with Theodor Kullak and J. T. Hoyer at the New Academy of Music in Berlin. In 1873 he went to Vienna, where he obtained the title of “chamber virtuoso” and worked as a professor at the New Vienna Conservatory there. He made numerous concert tours through Europe and the USA. He is best known for the performance of his concert paraphrases of Strauss waltzes. Johann Strauss (son) dedicated his Spring Voice Waltz Op. 410
The best known is probably his concert paraphrase on Johann Strauss’s waltz motifs “Soirée de Vienne”, Op. 56, which is still often made to sound in the concert hall and demands a lot of dexterity from the pianist due to the magnificent, virtuoso decoration of the work.
His brother Heinrich Grünfeld (1855–1931) was also a well-known composer and cellist. His niece Erna Grünfeld taught piano at the Prague Conservatory, and Ivan Moravec was one of her students.
He rests in a grave of honor in the Vienna Central Cemetery (group 32 C, number 2). Above Baden near Vienna, a memorial plaque erected in 1991 reminds of him at the Alfred Grünfeld-Ruhe in the Vienna Woods. This plaque, dedicated to Baden’s frequent guest, was destroyed in 1938 for political reasons.
The street was called Hofhaimergasse from 1938 to 1947.