Rudolph Reti

Rudolph Reti, also Réti (; November 27, 1885 – February 7, 1957), was a musical analyst, composer and pianist. He was the older brother of the chess master Richard Réti, but unlike his brother, Reti did not write his surname with an acute accent on the ’e’. Biography Reti was born in Užice in the Kingdom of Serbia and studied music theory, musicology and piano in Vienna. Among his teachers was the pianist Eduard Steuermann, an eminent champion of Schoenberg and a supporter of modern music. Reti was in contact with Schoenberg at the time of that composer’s earliest atonal works, and in 1911 gave the first performance of his Drei Klavierstücke Op.11. Reti’s compositions have not remained in the repertoire, but he was an active composer and received a number of high-profile performances. At the end of the first International Festival of Modern Music in Salzburg, in 1922, his ‘Six Songs’ were performed alongside Schoenberg’s Second Quartet; three years later, at the 3rd ISCM Festival in Prague, his Concertino for Piano and Orchestra shared a programme with Martinu’s ‘Half-Time’ and Vaughan Williams’s ‘A Pastoral Symphony’. In 1938, his David and Goliath Suite was performed by Eduard va