From the Alwinac: On This Day in 1891: Schroeder Arrives in the US

[Click on image to
go directly to
the Alwinac’s home page]

[The Alwinac blog is part of the schroeder170 project, honoring the life and musical career of cellist Alwin Schroeder (1855-1928) and exploring the history of cello playing in the US.]


Listen to David Popper’s Adagio, Op. 65, No. 1, published in 1891 and dedicated to Alwin Schroeder

130 years ago [September 22], Alwin Schroeder and his family arrived in New York on the SS Aller from Bremen. In the passenger list, Schroeder is described as “artist of music.” The youngest of his three children was just 7 months old at the time. He and his family settled in at 8 Myrtle St. in Brookline, MA, renting a 600-square-foot house that still stands today.

    One of the questions I was asked by his relatives when visiting Alwin-related places in Germany was why Alwin Schroeder left Germany at all. I don’t think he really wanted to leave. If there had been a suitable position in Dresden or Berlin at the time, I am convinced that he would have stayed. As it was, he was likely more enticed by the idea of where he was going, by the thought of expanded professional horizons. Pianist Jan Ignace Paderewski, who came to the US for the first time that same year (1891), put it like this: “America, then as now, was a ‘promised land’ to all European artists, a land of fantastic and fabulous legend, with money and appreciation flowing out to meet the artist from the great and lively and generous American public.” (Paderewski, Memoirs, p. 188)
_______________
Read on….

Copyright © 2021 by Geoffrey Dean