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Born: January 22, 1928 - Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Died: January 31, 2011 - USA |
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The German-born American violinist, conductor and music pedagogue, Philipp Otto Naegele, was born in in Stuttgart, Germany; his father a well-known painter, his mother a physician. In 1939 he traveled on the Kindertransport to England to escape Hitler's regime and in 1940 he was reunited with his parents in New York in the USA. Though he began his studies privately, he attended the New York's High School of Music and Art, and graduated from Queens College in 1949, and completed a doctorate in musicology at Princeton University in 1955. He also received a Fulbright Scholarship, allowing him a year of year of violin studies at the Vienna Academy of Music under Franz Samohyl. Drafted into the Army after graduate school, he served as the concertmaster of the Seventh Army Symphony, stationed in his native Stuttgart.
The fortunate encounter with the founders of the Marlboro School and Festival (Rudolf Serkin, Adolf Busch, and Marcel Moyse) in 1950 began a participation of Philipp Naegele as violinist and violist - and ultimately translator - that has endured for sixty years till his death. At Marlboro College he was under the tutelage of Adolf Busch, who he called his "idol". After eight years as violinist in the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell (1956-1964), he served thirty-six years on the music faculty of Smith College (1964-2000), appointed to the Keenan chair in 1978. At Smith, he taught violin and viola, gave courses on J.S. Bach and W.A. Mozart, and directed chamber-music concerts at a level of excellence not usually found at a small liberal-arts college. While at Smith, he regularly performed and toured in the USA and abroad. He played in various chamber music configurations - such as Musicians From Marlboro, the Cantilena Piano Quartet, the Vegh Quartet. As a soloist or chamber musician, he made a substantial number of recordings. After retirement, he became the William R. Kenan Professor of Music Emeritus, Smith College, and was an active teacher at Amherst College and elsewhere. |
