Karl Johannes Max Strub (28 September 1900 – 23 March 1966) was a German violin virtuoso and eminent violin pedagogue. He gained a Europe-wide reputation during his 36 years of activity as primarius of the Strub Quartet. Stations as concertmaster led him from the 1920s to the operas of Stuttgart, Dresden and Berlin. Appointed Germany's youngest music professor at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar in 1926, he followed calls to the Berlin University of the Arts and, after the Second World War to the Hochschule für Musik Detmold. Strub was a connoisseur of the classical-romantic repertoire, but also devoted himself to modern music, among others he gave the world premiere of Hindemith's Violin Sonata No. 2 in D major. He promoted the music of Hans Pfitzner. Strub played on a Stradivari violin until 1945; numerous recordings from the 1930s/40s document his work.
Life Origin and musical encouragement Strub was born in 1900 as the eldest of three children of the photographer Otto Strub and his wife Ida, née Göhringer, in Mainz in the then Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt. His mother was the daughter of a cigarette manufacturer from the neighboring Biebrich, a district of Wiesbaden that was later incorporated. His sister Elisabeth married an American manufacturer with whom she was to settle in Weimar. Rosa, his younger sister, also spent most of her life there.Elgin Strub: Skizzen einer Künstlerfamilie in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , .
The father earned his living mainly with post-mortem photography. In his Mainz atelier in the Frauenlobstraße 25 in Neustadt, European violinists such as Willy Burmester, Joseph Joachim, Jan KubelíkElgin Strub: Sketches of an artist family in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , . and Henri MarteauA portrait photo of Henri Marteau belongs to the photo collection of the Deutsches Musikgeschichtliches Archiv in Kassel; See. Bildarchiv: Marteau, Henri , dmga.de, retrieved 25 July 2020. as well as the still young Franz von Vecsey, whom he in turn photographed for free. Otto Strub was himself a passionate amateur violinist and supported Max musically to the best of his ability. There was a piano in his studio and he received his first piano lessons at the age of five. From the age of six he was taught violin by Alfred Stauffer, concertmaster of the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz.Elgin Strub: Sketches of a family of artists in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , . Kubelik recommended the ambitious father to contact the Viennese violin professor Otakar Ševčík. In his correspondence, however, he advised against a career as a musician for financial reasons.Letter from Professor Ševčík to Strub, undated printed in Elgin Strub: Skizzen einer Künstlerfamilie in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , p 57f.
In his native town, Strub attended the Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium, where he showed himself to be musically and artistically talented. He played in the school orchestra there, whose first violin he soon took over.Elgin Strub: Sketches of an artist family in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , . The writer Carl Zuckmayer, four years his senior, with whom he was friends throughout his life, belonged to the cello group,See Carl Zuckmayer, Paul Hindemith: Correspondence. Edited, introduced and commented by Gunther Nickel and Giselher Schubert, Röhrig, St. Ingbert 1998, , . Strub gave his first public concert at the age of twelve. He played with the Mainz orchestra Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor. Two years later, he performed Beethoven's Violin Concerto and the 3rd Piano Concerto in Frankfurt (then in Hessen-Nassau), among others. Zuckmayer retrospectively described the young Strub as a musical "child prodigy".Carl Zuckmayer: Aufruf zum Leben. Porträts und Zeugnisse aus bewegten Zeiten. Edited by Knut Beck und Maria Guttenbrunner-Zuckmayer, Fischer, Frankfurt 1995, , .
Violin studies in Cologne Strub, who was gifted for playing piano and violin, had to make a decision and – without AbiturSee Karl-Heinz Knittel (ed.): Abitur students of the Mainz old-language grammar school (Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium) from 1901–2007. CD supplement to: Ferdinand Scherf, Meike Hensel-Grobe, Franz Dumont Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium Mainz. The history of the school. Rutzen, Ruhpolding among others 2008, . – sixteen years old on the advice of the conductor Fritz Busch, brother of the violinist Adolf Busch,Elgin Strub: Max Strub. In The Strad 101 (1990) 1208, , here . the decision to join the violin class of the former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic at the . Bram Eldering, a pupil of Joseph Joachim, to enter.Elgin Strub: Sketches of an artist family in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , . Besides Strub, Adolf Busch and Wilhelm Stross were also trained by the Dutch music teacher Eldering. Together with his mother and younger sister, the underage student Strub lived with a landlord during the First World War.Elgin Strub: Sketches of an Artist Family in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , . He was able to play until 1918Karlheinz Weber: Vom Spielmann zum städtischen Kammermusiker. Zur Geschichte des Gürzenich-Orchesters. Volume 2, Merseburger, Kassel 2009, , . as second violinist at the orchestra rehearsals of the municipal Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne under the musical direction of Hermann Abendroth. He was open to all styles, including contemporary music.Karlheinz Weber: Vom Spielmann zum städtischen Kammermusiker. Zur Geschichte des Gürzenich-Orchesters. Vol. 1, Merseburger, Kassel 2009, , . In 1918, Strub was awarded the Mendelssohn Prize in Berlin, combined with a performance under the conductor Otto Klemperer that was well-received in the local press. Together with the growing cello virtuoso Emanuel Feuermann he played Brahms' Double Concerto in A minor.Elgin Strub: Skizzen einer Künstlerfamilie in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , p. 60f. He remained at the Cologne Conservatory for another year.
Chamber musician, concert master and professor Stuttgart, 1921/22 After a tour of Germany and Italy, in August 1921 the Landes music director Fritz Busch brought Strub to Stuttgart as concert master and thus successor to Karl Wendling at the orchestra of the Staatstheater Stuttgart.Elgin Strub: Skizzen einer Künstlerfamilie in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , . Strub, who had little orchestral experience at the time, was Busch's last choice after the application process had been disillusioned. Busch described him as a "first-rate violinist" and predicted a steep career for him. His contract obliged him to perform opera and symphony concerts, i.e. 10 performances plus rehearsals each, whereby he was released from rehearsals and from the operetta service. At the events in the opera, the concertmaster Reinhold Rohlfs-Zoll, who had been Wendling's representative for a time, was treated as an equal.Cf. personnel records of Max Strub with the order signature Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg E 18 VI Bü 1226 (Verfilmtes Dokument). Busch pursued a modern programming at the Landestheaterorchester, which was not always received positively by the critics.Already in June 1921, the premieres of the expressionist Hindemith operas Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen and Das Nusch-Nuschi in Stuttgart caused a theater scandal, see Ulrich Drüner: 400 Jahre Staatsorchester Stuttgart. Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Berufsstandes Orchestermusiker am Beispiel Stuttgart. In Staatstheater Stuttgart (ed.): 400 Jahre Staatsorchester Stuttgart: 1593–1993. Eine Festschrift. Stuttgart 1994, , here p. 132f. During Strub's period of service, in October 1921, Ewald Straesser's Fourth Symphony op. 44 premiered in the Stuttgart . The private citizen Strub became acquainted with the Busch family of musicians and the conductor Busch later became godfather of his son Harald Strub, along with the violin teacher Eldering.Elgin Strub: Skizzen einer Künstlerfamilie in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , p. 61f.
Dresden, 1922–1925 With Busch, who had been enticed away to Dresden, Strub moved to the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden of the Staatsoper Dresden (Semperoper) in 1922, where he took the position of first concertmaster.Ortrun Landmann: Namenverzeichnisse der Sächsischen Staatskapelle Dresden: eigene Benennungen, Namen der Administratoren, der musikalischen Leiter und der ehemaligen Mitglieder von 1548 bis 2013, in systematisch-chronologischer Folge. Presented in 2013, since then updated and corrected annually (Stand: August 2017), (PDF). After his performance of Brahms' Violin concertoPersönliches. In Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 89 (1922) 8, . the orchestra decided unanimously for Strub. During his time with the orchestra in 1924 at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Busch was responsible for the premiere of Strauss’ Intermezzo, "bürgerlichen Komödie mit sinfonischen Zwischenspielen" (bourgeois comedy with symphonic interludes).Fritz Busch on LexMusikNS; for the work see among others Ulrich Konrad: Intermezzo – Die Ägyptische Helena – Arabella. In Walter Werbeck (ed.): Richard-Strauss-Handbuch. Metzler/Bärenreiter, Stuttgart among others , , here . In the same year, Strub was assigned the Dutch violinist Jan Dahmen as first concert master.Aus Konzert und Oper. In Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 91 (1924) 1, . After Strub had left the Saxon capital in favour of a career as a soloist and music teacher,Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski: Die Violine und ihre Meister. Bearbeitet und ergänzt von Waldemar von Wasielewski, Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1927, . he was succeeded by Karl Thomann.
In 1923, Strub replaced Gustav Havemann as first violinist in the Petri Quartet, to which the orchestra musicians Erdmann Warwas (2nd violin), Alfred Spitzner (alto) and Georg Wille (violoncello) belonged.Michael Waiblinger, Strub Quartet, Booklet, Meloclassic 4002, 2014. According to the historian Michael Hans Kater, he soon surpassed his predecessor Havemann as a string player.Michael Hans Kater: Die mißbrauchte Muse. Musiker im Dritten Reich. Piper, Munich among others. 2000, , .
Weimar 1925–1928 A friend of the family of his wife Hilde Neuffer, who was married in 1922, the director of the music school Bruno Hinze-Reinhold, moved the Strubs to Thuringia the state capital of Weimar.Elgin Strub: Skizzen einer Künstlerfamilie in Weimar. J. E. Ronayne, London 1999, , . From April 1925, Strub was the full-time head of one of the two violin classes (alongside Robert Reitz) at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar as successor to the pedagogue Paul Elgers.Wolfram Huschke: Zukunft Musik: Eine Geschichte der Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar. Böhlau, Cologne among others 2006, , .For Strub's appointment to Weimar see Persönliches and Konservatoren und $Unterrichtswesen. In Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 92 (1925) 2 and 10, . He established the violin school Die Kunst des Violinspiels (1923) in Weimar of the internationally active violin teacher Carl Flesch known to him. In 1926, 26-year-old Strub was the youngest musician in Germany to receive a professorship. According to the Weimar composer and music teacher Eduard August Molnar jr., his vocation, however, also brought forth envious people who only approved of such a teaching obligation around the age of 60.Eduard August Molnar jun.: Weimar. In Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 94 (1927) 5, . To avert Strub's departure for Berlin, he was made a civil servant in 1927; in addition, his salary increased. Although Strub moved to the capital in 1928, he continued to teach in Weimar two days a week until 1930. Also because of its international reputation, the music school was transformed into a music academy in 1930.Wolfram Huschke: Strub, Max. In Gitta Günther, Wolfram Huschke, Walter Steiner (ed.): Weimar: Lexikon zu Stadtgeschichte. Metzler, Weimar 1998, , .