OBITUARIES

HANSHEINZ SCHNEEBERGER

Violinist Hansheinz Schneeberger died on 23 October at the age of 93. Born in Bern in 1926, he entered the city’s conservatoire studying with Walter Kagi before graduating with a full diploma while still 17.

Unable to go abroad to continue his studies during the war, he attended a masterclass with Carl Flesch in Lucerne. Flesch took him on as his student but died just six months later, although Schneeberger remembered that period as crucial in advancing his technique.

After the borders reopened, he went to Paris and studied with Boris Kamensky, a pupil of Ysaye, Auer and Joachim. Following this he accepted a teaching post in Switzerland and began to make a reputation as a soloist, most notably being asked to premiere Swiss composer Frank Martin’s Violin Concerto in 1952.

In 1958 he was asked to premiere Bartok’s lost concerto (now named his Violin Concerto no.l), 50 years after its composition. It had been dedicated to the Hungarian violinist StefiGeyer, with whom Bartok was in love, but she refused to play it The concerto remained unperformed until after her death.

His reputation rising, Schneeberger was invited to audition for the position of concertmaster at the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg in 1958. He got the job but found himself temperamentally unsuited to the pace of life in a full-time orchestra, and remained for just three years. ‘I was not completely happy there,’he recalled in a recent interview. ’I had been so free before, I could decide how to spend my time, and suddenly there were fixed rules.’

He leaped at the offer of a class at the Musik-Akademie Basel and taught there for 30years until his retirement, and remained in the city for the rest of his life.

As well as making a number of recordings, he was active as a soloist and chamber musician throughout his career. He maintained a core repertoire of his favourite works right to the end, occasionally performing in public into his nineties.

BŘETISLAV NOVOTNÝ

Bretislav Novotny, formerly first violinist of the Prague String Quartet and concertmaster of the Prague Symphony Orchestra, has died. He was 95.

Born on 10 January 1924, in Vsetin, Czechoslovakia (the present day Czech Republic), Novotny took up playing the violin at the age of nine. After completing secondary school education in 1943, he intended to study at the Prague Conservatoire, but he did not receive permission to study from the German occupation authorities. Instead, he was forced to work in an armaments factory in Vsetin until the end of the war and it was not until after the liberation in 1945 that he started violin classes at the Prague Conservatoire, studying with Professor Bedrich Voldan.

One year before graduating, Novotny made his debut at the Smetana Hall in Prague, performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Prague Symphony Orchestra (FOK) under Vaclav Smetacek. In 1954 he was appointed concertmaster of the orchestra - a position he held until 1961.

In 1955, Novotny founded the Prague String Quartet, with whom he would regularly travel across the world as first violinist. The group won numerous awards with their recordings for Supraphon, not least the High Fidelity International Record Critics Award in 1978 for their recording of Dvorak’s string quartets.

But chamber music was not the sum of Novotny’s career. As a soloist he is perhaps best known for his interpretations of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, which he performed in their entirety in two concerts at Prague’s Rudolfinum, in January 1969.

As a pedagogue he taught at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Prague, gave masterclasses in many countries and lectured at universities in Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and the US, in addition to his private teaching.

Throughout his life Novotny remained passionate about orchestral music making, serving as artistic advisor to the Prague Chamber Orchestra from 1972 to 1990, and as conductor of the South Bohemian Chamber Philharmonic (JKF Budweis) in Ceské Budéjovice from 1988 to 2007.

One of Novotny’s younger colleagues, the violinist Václav Hudecek, said he ‘was an excellent soloist, one of the few to record a complete set of Bach’s sonatas and scores for solo violin.

He played it unconventionally, but beautifully […] Above all else, he was an extremely modest, decent man, and, from the older generation, the dearest colleague I’ve ever known in my life.’

JITKA SURANSKÁ

The Czech violinist and singer Jitka Suranská, who was known for her interpretation of Moravian folksongs, has died of cancer aged 41.

A graduate of the Suranská Conservatoire in Brno, Suranská, who came from Kudlovice in the Zlin region of the Czech Republic, was a member of the Bohuslav Martini! Philharmonic in Zlin.

Since childhood, however, she had played in a dulcimer band, and she eventually made her name for performances that combined violin playing and singing, drawing inspiration from Czech folklore.

She played for ten years in the Stanislav Gabriel Dulcimer Band. Later she started to perform as a soloist, and - from 2014 onwards - as a member of a trio, with the mandolin player Martín Krajicek and the double bassist, folk flautist and cymbal player Marian Friedl. With the trio she created a distinctive musical language based on Moravian folk music, but spiced with original instrumentation, winning three Andél Awards, bestowed by the Czech Academy of Popular Music.

In 2018 she created a musical duo with Petr Uvira, guitarist of the band Lada. She also worked with the Women’s Choir of Kudlovice.

‘A good musician can change like a chameleon,’ Suranská told Brno Music Friendly City in October 2016. ‘It is difficult, but for me it is very rewarding.’