Eduard Lassen

* 13.04.1830 in Kopenhagen; ✝ 15.01.1904 in Kopenhagen

Pianist, Conductor, Composer

Biography

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After his parents had moved from Copenhagen to Brussels, Eduard Lassen attended the Brussels Conservatory from the age of twelve. Having received various prizes for his achievements in piano and harmony he was in 1851 rewarded for his Balthasar cantata with his first prize for composition, which made it possible for him to live abroad for many years. So it was that he came, amongst other places, to Weimar, where he met Franz Liszt, who had a profound influence on his compositions.

Liszt encouraged Lassen to rework his opera Le roi Edgar (1855), which had failed miserably in Belgium, and the result was that a new version, with the title Landgraf Ludwigs Brautfahrt, appeared on the Weimar stage in 1857 – after which Lassen was given the permanent post of Weimar musical director by the Archduke of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach. Though his compositional flair is not regarded as exceptional, he enjoyed success as pianist, conductor and chamber-music accompanist. Furthermore, Eduard Lassen managed to sustain Weimar’s musical life at such an elevated pitch that the city was still attracting important musical personalities at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Shakespeare Adaptations

Literature

Secondary Literature

Album pages with this person

Citation and Licence

Lassen, Eduard, in: The Digital Shakespeare Memorial Album. Edited by Christa Jansohn. URI: http://www.shakespearealbum.de/uri/gnd/118975773. (Accessed on 29.03.2024)

This text is published under the following licence: CC BY-ND 3.0 DE. Digitzed media reproduced with the permission of the library of Birmingham.

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