Ernst Rudorff
Ernst Rudorff (b. Berlin, 18. January 1840 – d. Berlin, 31. December 1916) Symphony no. 2 in G minor, op. 40 Born in Berlin, Ernst Friedrich Karl Rudorff was a German conductor, composer, pianist and teacher whose mother knew Mendelssohn and studied with Karl Friedrich Zelter (notable for founding the Berlin Singakademie, amongst other achievements), while his father was a professor of law. Rudorff’s parents’ home was often visited by German Romantic composers of the day, and he numbered Johann Friedrich Reichardt and Ludwig Tieck among his ancestors. From 1850 he studied piano and composition with Woldemar Bargiel (1828–1897), Clara Schumann’s half-brother, who, having studied at the Leipzig Conservatory prior to Rudorff, became a noted teacher and composer emulating though not copying Robert Schumann’s musical style. From 1852 to 1854 Rudorff studied violin with Louis Ries (1830- 1913), a member of the Ries family of musicians, who settled in London in 1853, and he studied piano for a short while with Clara Schumann in 1858, who added him to her list of lifelong musical friends, a list which included Mendelssohn, Joseph Joachim and Brahms. Subsequently, from 1859 to 1860, Rudorff studied history and theology at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig and music at Leipzig Conservatory from 1859 to 1861, where Ignaz Moscheles (for piano) and Julius Rietz (for composition) were his teachers. He then (from 1861 to 1862) studied privately with Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) – who was in his time well connected to Mendelssohn, the Schumanns and
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