Richard Mandl (1859-1918)

[Wheesht]

Richard Mandl came from a wealthy Jewish family of textile industrialists in Prossnitz, Moravia (today: Prostějov in the Czech Republic). He took up music studies at the Vienna Conservatoire with Franz Krenn when he was just 11, later her went to Paris to study with Delius. He composed mostly lieder but also chamber music and large scale symphonic works. Both the ONB and the Wienbibliothek in Vienna have works by him, his estate, eight boxes, is held by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.

There appears to be just one commercial recording, of one song, available on an MDG album 'Songs after poems by Theodor Storm': Gode Nacht.

Mandl's 'Hymn to the Rising Sun' was performed at the Proms in 1913.

There had also been plans for a Winnetou-Symphony, based on the novels by the famous German writer Karl May, who had created the figure of the 'noble savage' and whom Mandl went to visit.

This is the translation of an obituary, written by the eminent Viennese critic and musicologist Elsa Bienenfeld, in the Neues Wiener Journal, 3 April 1918:

Remembering Richard Mandl.
By
Dr. Elsa Bienenfeld.
It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write a few words of farewell about a composer who was dear to me and whom I admired both as an artist and as a person. Now he has departed from us, this lovable, refined and kind musician, who endured decades of severe physical suffering and yet was so clear and bright of mind that everyone who came into his presence felt refreshed and happy! I can see him before me with his blue eyes shining from within his oh-so-narrow face.
The thick hair around his magnificent forehead suited him fantastically, and with his pointed beard, which made his intelligent artist's head look even sharper, he looked like the embodiment of a dream from Musset's poetry. There was an air of the genius and at the same time of utter elegance about his appearance. He did not look at all like the idea of an artist a German philistine would have had.
He was a man of the world of the highest culture and showed this, without being aware, and however trivial it may sound, even in his choice of tie. As original as he looked, one never had the feeling of deliberate originality for a moment. The mixture of the many elements in his nature was curious, but each of them was so genuine and true and bound by such heartfelt cordiality that all together they formed a complete and thoroughly sincere personality. The Japanese claim that every human being is granted not one but several souls, and that the gods give many to the worthy and few to the unworthy.
 This remarkable artist was such a person, with many inseparable souls within him.
He was little known in Vienna, for it was not in his nature to blow his own trumpet, and besides, his suffering often confined him to his home, even to his bed, for months at a time. He, too, tasted the bitter fate that Vienna appears to have in plentiful store for all significant creative minds in the field of art, much as it lavishly spoils popular singers and pianists. The fact that he, long recognised everywhere, in Germany as well as in France and England, had to beg for every performance in Vienna, his home city, like a schoolboy being told off, and that at the last moment, under all sorts of pretexts, the promise would be revoked, tormented him to the core. Just in the last few weeks, an insult of this kind brought the creative man to his knees. His last symphonic work, a suite entitled 'Vienniensia', had been accepted by the Philharmonic Orchestra and included in the programme.
At the last moment, the composer was informed that no more than one (!!!) rehearsal, namely a read-through rehearsal, could be devoted to studying this work, because the second rehearsal, the dress rehearsal, would be public and in front of a paying audience. So selflessly, so purely in the service of art and its progress are concerts organised. It is painful to see behind the scenes. Naturally, it was impossible to perform a score as rich in polyphony as Richard Mandl's latest composition in one rehearsal, which is to say in practically no rehearsal at all, and just as naturally the composer withdrew his piece so as not to burden the orchestra with work.
Richard Mandl, who entered the Vienna Conservatory at the age of eleven, went to Paris at the age of twenty-five. Equipped with an unusually receptive sense for the finest currents of culture, he absorbed everything the French capital had to offer in terms of artistic inspiration with a warmth that is quite unique. As numerous as the many German musicians are who have lived in Paris, none has processed the distinctive and unusual aspects of French art with a more supreme spirit than Richard Mandl. His rich and kind nature knew how to seek out and enjoy beauty everywhere; nothing seemed repulsive to him because it was foreign, but he had the strength within himself to understand, appreciate and love even the most unfamiliar views.
He had numerous admirers and friends among artists. When I was in Paris immediately before the outbreak of the war, I was able to experience for myself how many French artists, painters and writers were devoted to him with genuine sympathy. His magnificent universality won over all hearts beyond national borders.
Of the hundreds of songs Richard Mandl composed, most were written during his time in Paris. Some of them still show a lighter touch, albeit a subtle one. A very melodious piano quintet, which is one of his best-known and most frequently performed chamber music works, was also composed in Paris. Soon, however, Richard Mandl turned his attention to the orchestra, where he found the true source of his rich and refined talent.
His first major work was 'Griselidis', a symphonic poem for large orchestra, organ, mezzo-soprano solo and choir. It was a piece of music in which German intimacy was blended most remarkably with the thoroughness of French sound and joy of playing, with an enchanting touch of spirit and wit.
The blossoming spring splendour of Provence radiates from the sounds, seen through the eyes of a German-minded artistic temperament. The bright sunshine, the deep blue of the sky, the fragrant red roses – with what joy, with what delight did this artist experience them, how imaginatively did he transform them into sounds!
Richard Mandl remained in Paris for almost twenty years and, as a connoisseur of the visual arts like no other musician, he also enthusiastically indulged in the other artistic passion of his life, painting, as a collector. Then he returned to Vienna and composed the witty, both grotesque and ecstatic Gascogne Overture, a marvel of musical characterisation, of graceful wit in the most artful and difficult polyphonic form. A symphonic poem, Algeria, with its dazzling colouring of European and African landscape moods, and the as yet unperformed suite Vienniensia form the main works of his creative output, wrested from fever and pain.
With his intriguing blend of Romance and German culture, his half-ironic, half-tender intellect and his wonderful sense of form, he was nothing less than a musical Heinrich Heine.
This Viennese artist did not live to see the full success of his delightful scores, filled with the finest ideas. But now that the artist is dead, his success, so ardently hoped for, so consuming and longed for during his many years of illness, will become a reality. Tormented by illness and depressed by a lack of recognition, he nevertheless knew a happiness that is granted to only of a hundred of thousand.
When he began to make music, he became so radiant with happiness, so passionate, that he became enviable. And he possessed such comprehensive knowledge, his intellectual gaze was so broad, his mind so receptive to all the beauties of art and nature, that, himself touchingly grateful, he delighted everyone who saw him with the inner richness of his being.
In his presence, every word, every thought seemed ennobled. A faithful and beloved wife, herself an excellent pianist and musician, who understood him with admiration and cared for him with devotion, eased his suffering and beautified his life. We, his friends, are deeply saddened by the loss of this noble man. The great multitude of musicians and music lovers will yet come to know and love him through his works.

[Mark Thomas]

What a generous obituary. It's tempting to wonder, uncharitably I know, whether Mandl's obscurity, even in his own lifetime, points to the music being rather less interesting than the obituary paints it.

[Droosbury]

Here he is on German Wikipedia – complete with a photograph showing his extraordinary barnet (Eng. slang, hairstyle). But we're still none the wiser about what terrible ailments he suffered from (nor what his intriguing melding of French and German symphonic sensibilities might have sounded like).

https://www.karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Richard_Mandl

[Wheesht]

Here's another tidbit about him, a review of a concert given in Manchester, from the Yorkshire Post, Friday, 31 January 1913:

This [i.e. Mahler's First, in its first ever Manchester performance] was not the only novelty in the programme, for a piece entitled "Hymn to the Rising Sun," by Richard Mandl, composer of the "Gascon" Overture, heard at an early concert, was also given. It is for strings, harp, and organ, a rather suspicious combination; nor was suspicion unjustified, for though well written and highly effective, it has that peculiarly "sweet" sentiment which is generally associated with pieces of this type. Needless to say it was heartily received, and the insistent demand for a repetition was only obviated by the adroitness of Mr Balling, who made as if he were going to comply with the wish of the audience, and had got well into the next piece before they realised they were cheated.

(That piece was the Suite Française by Roger-Ducasse).

I must admit I have never come across a conductor using this kind of ploy to avoid having to repeat a piece.

[semloh]

Remarkable sleuthing and an intriguing account! Thank you, Wheesht!