Ottmar Gerster

Ottmar Gerster (29 June 1897 – 31 August 1969) was a German viola player, conductor and composer who in 1948 became rector of the Liszt Music Academy in Weimar. Life Ottmar Gerster was born some 50 km (30 miles) north of Frankfurt during the closing years of the nineteenth century. His father was a neurologist and his mother was a pianist. He attended an Academic secondary school (“Gymnasium”) and entered, in 1913, the Dr Hoch Music Conservatory where his teachers included Bernhard Sekles (improvisation) and Adolf Rebner (violin). It was at the Hoch Conservatory that Gerster also got to know Paul Hindemith who was a near contemporary. setting a text by Baldur von Schirach. In 1936 there was a popular song entitled “The stranger bride” and a choral song “German airmen”. Gerster’s Opera “The Witches of Passau” had its first performance in Düsseldorf in 1941. Further productions quickly followed in Bremen, Magdeburg, Essen und Liegnitz, and in the same year the city of Düsseldorf awarded him its version of the Robert Schumann Prize for the work. In 1943 the National Office for Music Production (die Reichsstelle für Musikbearbeitung) gave him a 50,000 Mark contract to compose his opera