Ewald Straesser (27 June 1867 – 4 April 1933) was a German composer of classical music

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

.

Straesser was born in Burscheid

Burscheid

Burscheid is a town in the Rheinisch-Bergischer district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The town is known for its sub-communities and the town centre with its marketplace and churches....

, near Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

. He was a student of Franz Wüllner

Franz Wüllner

Franz Wüllner was a German composer and conductor. He led the premieres of Richard Wagner's operas Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, but was much criticized by Wagner himself, who greatly preferred the more celebrated conductors Hans von Bülow and Hermann Levi.Wüllner was born in Münster and studied...

 at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and later counted Georg van Albrecht among his own students, also Erwin Schulhoff

Erwin Schulhoff

Erwin Schulhoff was a Czech composer and pianist.-Life:Born in Prague of Jewish-German origin, Schulhoff was one of the brightest figures in a generation of European musicians whose successful careers were prematurely terminated by the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany...

 (teaching him instrumentation/orchestration) At the Hochschule he succeeded Joseph Haas

Joseph Haas

Joseph Haas was a German late romantic composer and music teacher.-Biography:He was born in Maihingen, near Nördlingen to teacher Alban Haas from his second marriage, being half-brother to the theologist and historian Alban Haas. At an early age he came into contact with music...

 as professor of composition in 1921.

He died in 1933 in Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

. Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...

, Hermann Abendroth

Hermann Abendroth

Hermann Paul Maximilian Abendroth was a German conductor.-Early life:Abendroth was born on 19 January 1883, at Frankfurt, Germany, belonging to a family which had already produced other artistic figures of divers disciplines...

and other conductors and ensembles featured works by Straesser in their concerts. The conductor Karl Panzner (1866–1923) championed Straesser's symphonies early on (and premiered his 5th symphony.)

Major works by Straesser include:

• 5 string quartets (Nos. 1 and 2, pub. 1901 ; no.3, pub.1913; no.4, pub.1920; no.5, pub.1927)
• other chamber works (including a piano sonata (Kleine sonate), violin sonata, piano quintet and piano trio)
• 6 symphonies
• concertos for piano, violin, and cello (1901, UK premiere 1903)(this last possibly lost. the piano concerto has been broadcast.)

There is an Ewald-Sträßer-Weg (Way/Street) in Burscheid.

External links

Includes CC recordings of all five quartets and a more nearly complete list of works