Grieg in Manchester

Nina and Edvard Grieg, dated 1906
(RNCM Archive ref AB/211)

Manchester Camerata will be performing two concerts in the RNCM Concert Hall this weekend, 21 -22 May. Linked by the music of Beethoven, the concerts feature students from the RNCM's conducting courses. On Saturday, the programme includes Two Elegiac Melodies Op 34, by Edvard Grieg.  Grieg and his wife Nina became friends of Adolph Brodsky and his wife Anna after meeting in Leipzig in the 1880s.

As the second Principal of the Royal Manchester College of Music, Brodsky's papers are held in the RNCM Archives. Correspondence between the friends dates from 1890 and continues with Anna's sister Olga even after the deaths of the Brodskys in 1929. The letters are in German except for those written by Nina during the First World War, which are in English. There are about thirty letters from Edvard to Adolph and about a hundred from Nina to Anna.

When Grieg visited Manchester in November 1897, he stayed with the Brodskys.  One of his letters to Anna gives a flavour of their relationship:

"We arrive on Wednesday 24th [November] at 2.30 and will go direct to 41 Acomb Street. And may I ask straight away, Frau Brodsky, if I can have at 4 o’clock a beefsteak (underdone!). I know this is impudent, and you see for yourself that you should have let us stay in a hotel. But before a concert you must not be offended if I am very strict about my food. It is absolutely necessary. The concert is at 7.30 and I must rest beforehand. And there is one more thing you must permit: Bechsteins are sending a pianino; will you please have it put into my room… As soon as I arrive I intend to exercise my fingers a little in my room, so I should be grateful for a fairly warm room. And now I will leave you in peace!" (RNCM Archive ref. AB/587)

The online catalogue for the Brodsky papers can be searched here. 

Exciting new acquisition

The signatures and musical sketches of such eminent musicians and composers as Dvořák, Saint-Saëns, Grieg, Brahms and Rachmaninoff are just some of the wonderful features of an autograph book recently donated to the RNCM Archives. The book belonged to Carl Fuchs, the Royal Manchester College of Music’s first Professor of Cello (a post he held between 1893 and 1942) and eminent member of the Brodsky Quartet.


The autograph book forms part of a very generous donation by Carl Fuchs’s granddaughter, Tessa. Other material in the collection includes photographs, scrapbooks and a beautiful silk cover for Carl’s cello which was made by his wife.

This collection is a welcome addition to the existing Carl Fuchs material held by the Archives and will prove invaluable for historians and musicians alike.

                                                      Carl Fuchs, Cellist (1865-1951)

Signature of Antonin Dvořák dated 1891

Signature of Camille Saint-Saëns dated 1901

This is the week that...

... Nina Grieg celebrates the Russian Revolution (17th May 1917)

(Ref: AB/861)

Nina Grieg was a Danish-Norwegian lyric soprano. She was the first cousin of composer Edvard Grieg and they married 11th June, 1867 in Copenhagen. The couple often performed concerts together in Europe and Edvard considered her the best performer of his songs. After the death of her husband in 1907, she moved to Denmark where she died on 9 December 1935.

Anna Brodsky was the wife of the Russian violinist Adolph Brodsky . The daughter of a Russian nobleman who owned estates in southern Russia, Anna married at Sevastopol in 1882, and accompanied her husband to the United States in 1891, eventually settling with him in Manchester, England.

In this letter, dated 17th May 1917, Nina rejoices with Anna at the Russian Revolution and wishes that Edvard were alive to see it, but is glad he does not see all the suffering. She looks forward to peace and a happy life in art and science, and declares “music must be international.”