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1873 - 1916
There are, of course, quite a number of reasons for naming a competition in Sondershausen after
the great musician Max Reger. For one his encounter with Hugo Riemann, one of the most important
phenomena in German music history and who was his teacher at the Sondershausen Conservatory. Secondly,
despite plenty of offers from other countries, Reger remained in Germany. His work later on in Thuringia,
for instance in Weimar, Meiningen an Jena, is proof of a very German sentiment. Over and over again Reger
was to draw strength from the music tradition here for the gigantic body of his life work.
Seventy compositions for chamber music alone are spread through his complete works. To him chamber music
meant absolute music and, with the Violin Sonata op.1 and the Clarinet Quintet op. 145, marked the beginning
and the end of his composition.
In the interpretation of his own compositions for orchestra, organ, piano and chamber music Reger was a
genius at championing his puristic style. Anything false, vain, pompous was rejected, just as was any
flirtation with the audiance. Amongst the greatest interpreters of his works Nikisch, Furtwängler, the
Gewandhaus Quartet, Adolf Busch anf Fritz Buschas students of composition assume a special role. The latter
wrote: "The Hiller Variations is a work containing more real music and mastery than anything else written
since Brahms or Hindemith followed this up by saying, "Max Reger was the last giant in music and without
him I would be quite unthinkable."
And so this competition hopes to provide further stimulus with regard to Max Regers creative work and to the
great music tradition in Sondershausen.
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