Max Erdmannsdörfer

Who was Max Erdmannsdörfer?

Max Erdmannsdörfer was a German conductor, pianist and composer.

He was born in Nuremberg. He studied at the Leipzig Conservatory, becoming concertmaster at Sondershausen. In 1874 he married the pianist and composer Pauline Fichtner, a student of Franz Liszt. She later used the professional name Pauline Erdmannsdörfer-Fichtner. Erdmannsdörfer corresponded with Liszt, and he premiered Liszt’s symphonic poem Hamlet at Sondershausen on 2 July 1876. He also once owned at least parts of the score of Liszt's lost Piano Concerto No. 3, which was finally pieced together only in 1989 from separate manuscript pages that had been dispersed as far afield as Weimar, Nuremberg and Leningrad. Max Erdmannsdörfer also had an association with Joachim Raff. He and Pauline were the co-dedicatees of the two-piano version of Raff's Piano Quintet, Op. 107, and they premiered it at Sondershausen on 22 September 1877. In 1870, Pauline had been the dedicatee of Raff’s Piano Suite in G minor. Erdmannsdörfer completed Raff's unfinished Symphony No. 11, Op. 214, after its composer's death, and had it published.

He premiered Sir Alexander Mackenzie’s overture Cervantes at Sondershausen in 1877.