Paul Weschke:

A master of the German School

By Anthony Parsons

Paul Weschke as first trombonist of the Berliner Staatsoper, c.1900Writing the programme notes to accompany Andrew Berryman's new CD was a very enjoyable task, but I was sorry that my researches into Andy's showpiece, Carnival in Venice by Paul Weschke, did not bear fruit in time for Doyen's production deadline. I was only able to discover Weschke's dates and the main details of his professional career in time for the printing of the booklet, but our colleagues in the German Trombone Society eventually pointed me in the right direction, and now that the CD is on the market, I can pass on some first-hand information about Weschke supplied by Horst Raasch, his last pupil. I got to know Horst's own story too and discovered that although we worked at different times and in different countries, we had a colleague in common.

Paul Weschke (1867-1940) was taught trombone by his father. His career began in 1885 as a military musician. When he was posted to Oldenburg in 1891, he also worked as first trombonist in the orchestra of the Hoftheater Schwerin in Mecklenburg. In 1895, he joined the Königliches Hoftheater in Berlin (now the Staatskapelle) as solo trombonist and played in the orchestra until 1929. In 1913, he was awarded the title of Königlicher Kammervirtuose - royal chamber music virtuoso.

In those days, the trombone was still regularly featured as a solo instrument and Weschke was really the last in a line of famous German soloists extending back to Karl Traugott Queisser's performances with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and even beyond that to Belcke, earlier in the nineteenth century. Weschke played the Romantic concertos by Ferdinand David and Serafin Alschausky, and Eugen Reiche (composer and virtuoso trombonist of the Royal Russian Court Orchestra, Saint Petersburg) dedicated his Trombone Concerto in A major to him. Weschke also had a repertoire of lighter solos, of which his own version of Carnival in Venice was the most spectacular. When he performed this piece for his Staatskapelle audition, the conductor, Karl Muck, asked him: "How high can you actually play, Herr Weschke?" "As high as you like, Herr Doktor," came the answer.

Muck also invited him to play in the Bayreuth Festspiel Orchestra over many seasons. He continued to perform his party pieces up to the age of nearly seventy, and contemporaries marvelled at his rich tone and a technique that reached up to double high Bb and chromatically down to the pedal register - without an F attachment. Fast too, so they said.

Weschke was also a remarkable teacher. He taught at the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule für Musik in Berlin from 1903 to 1934, where Horst Raasch studied with him during the final years. Horst began violin studies at the age of six, but was always torn between music and athletics. Forced to choose one or the other, he entered the Hochschule in 1930 as a violinist. String players commonly took up wind instruments at college in those days, and Horst was on the verge of being assigned to the bassoon when Professor Weschke, who had been impressed by his aural tests, took him aside and examined his mouth and teeth. "He'll play the trombone," said Weschke. Even as a music student, Horst was under consideration for the handball team, and when an injury to his left index finger put paid to any thoughts of being a string player, the trombone became his first instrument.

Lessons began at 8.00 a.m. and Weschke was stern with Horst, who was still toying with ideas of being an athlete, for not practising enough, and often being unavailable for college performances because of sport. When it almost reached the point of dropping out of music altogether, Weschke went to see Horst's parents and read the riot act. He said that Horst was his most talented student and had a very promising future as a trombonist. From then on, at the age of about fifteen, it was five hours a day in the practice studio.

Weschke's teaching method was founded on beauty of tone achieved through intense study of scales and long notes. He had studied singing and transcribed many songs and operatic arias which he used to teach expressive and melodic playing. He sang and played a great deal during lessons and insisted that students breathe correctly according to the words and vocal phrases. All the important orchestral passages had to be learned by heart. His students were found in all the finest orchestras, including that of Bayreuth.

Horst began his own career in the mid-1930s playing in orchestras in Berlin, but this ended abruptly when he was conscripted into the German army at the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. In 1942 he found himself in Stalingrad with the 22nd Panzer Division of the 6th Army. The Germans were forced to retreat to Kharkov - with Russian forces never more than three kilometres behind them. There he was wounded and sent back to Germany for hospital treatment at Heidelberg. In 1944, he was posted to Linz, Austria, where Hitler wanted to establish a cultural centre, the best in all Greater Germany, with the Bruckner Orchestra conducted by Georg Ludwig Jochum that would eclipse even the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras. Visiting conductors included Furtwängler, Karajan, Keilberth and Schuricht.

When the Russians reached Vienna, Jochum left the orchestra and, conductorless, it disintegrated. The war ended, Horst surrendered to the American forces and was imprisoned. He escaped back to Linz, where the orchestra was reforming under the conductor Peter Kreuder.

Soon, Austria became an independent state and the government insisted that Germans living there must take Austrian citizenship or leave the country. Horst moved to Stuttgart with a group of Linz players who came from that city, and played solo trombone in the opera orchestra conducted by Ferdinand Leithner. He also taught at the academy and played in a big band. When the Berlin Philharmonic visited Stuttgart in 1948 and found he had survived the war, they offered him a position. He also had an offer from the Norddeutsches Rundfunk Orchester (NDR), Hamburg.

The choice was a difficult one, but with Berlin an enclave within the Russian Zone and vulnerable to many political uncertainties, Hamburg seemed the safer bet. When the Bayreuth Festival opened again in 1951, Horst was invited as solo trombonist, playing under Karajan and Knappertsbusch. He played in the NDR until his retirement in 1986, taught at the Hochschule für Musik for 25 years and led an active freelance life that embraced popular music with the orchestras of Bert Kaempfert, James Last and Maurice Jarre.

An unexpected link cropped up between us when we were discussing work and conditions in our respective radio orchestras. German orchestras had dual principal positions before we did in Britain; and as he described his colleague in Hamburg, I soon recognised a familiar character. Alfred Flaszynski (1919-1985) left the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1964 and shared the principal job in Hamburg with Horst. But after a year of commuting to Germany and spending long periods away from home he leapt at the BBC Symphony Orchestra job when Bill Teskey retired. I became Alf's co-principal in 1970, and the third in this curious triangular tale of German, Polish and English orchestral trombonists. The generation of British players who remember Alf will not be surprised that the conversation turned away from ourselves at this point as we swapped stories about our mutual colleague - of fine playing, and of mischief that would have made Paul Weschke's whiskers bristle even more stiffly.

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