Who was/is Hans Martin Majewski ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more

Hans Martin Majewski

Hans-Martin Majewski (1911-1997), composer and conductor

From 1948 onwards Hans-Martin Majewski, winner of several critics' awards and German Federal Film Awards, wrote the music for 200 feature films and numerous cultural, documentary, industrial and television films as well as radio plays; he also worked for cabaret and theatre. This makes him the most versatile and productive composer of the German post-war era.

Majewski was born on January 14, 1911 in Schlawe, Pomerania, the son of a veterinary councillor. After breaking off his medical studies he enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory. His teachers included Kurt Thomas (choral conducting), Robert Teichmüller (piano) and Bruno Walter (conducting). In 1935 he moved to Berlin, where he found work as a répétiteur and conductor at the Theater des Volkes. There director Arthur Maria Rabenalt discovered him and engaged him in 1939 for his film 'Flucht ins Dunkel'.

A year earlier Majewski had already composed his first operetta, 'Insel der Träume', which was performed in Oldenburg, Berlin and Zwickau.

After the war, which Majewski survived as a soldier on the Eastern Front, he settled in Hamburg as a composer. He worked for literary cabarets and wrote radio plays for what was then the NWDR. Alongside a series of literary cabaret chansons at the 'Kaleidoskop' and the 'Bonbonniere', he directed the fortnightly 'Kabarett der Zeit' at the NWDR.

In 1948 director Wolfgang Liebeneiner brought Majewski back to film for the adaptation of Wolfgang Borchert's 'Draußen vor der Tür' (title: 'Liebe 47', with Hilde Krahl, Grethe Weiser, Karl John). The next project was the comic East-West story 'Postlagernd Turteltaube' (1952): together with Professor Oskar Sala, Majewski composed the first entirely electronic film score in Germany. Long before the synthesizer was invented, the Trautonium provided cinema sounds never heard before.

In the theatres and in radio Majewski met many great directors and actors. Despite frequently inadequate working conditions there was a spirit of new beginnings all around, and interesting opportunities opened up for Majewski too. People experimented everywhere, and there was more time available for productions than today.

In the following years he created the music for some 100 radio plays; outstanding among them: 'Faust I' (NWDR, 1947, directed by Ludwig Cremer), 'Des Teufels Träne' (directed by Helmut Käutner), 'Zum goldenen Anker' after Marcel Pagnol (NDR), 'Gestatten - mein Name ist Cox' (NDR, 1955). Majewski also earned much critical acclaim for 'Fünf tote alte Damen' (SFB, 1965), Max Frisch's 'Die Chinesische Mauer' (NDR), 'Maigret' (SWF, directed by Gert Westphal), 'Anna Karenina' (WDR, directed by Ludwig Cremer) and 'Geld spielt keine Rolle' (BR, directed by Kurt Reiss).

Majewski also intensified his work for the theatre. In Hamburg he composed for the Kammerspiele, the Große Schauspielhaus and the Thalia Theater. He wrote incidental music for the Schiller Theater and the Komödie am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. In the sixties Majewski was at times also active at the Schauspielhaus in Zurich. Among his greatest successes (again at the Schiller Theater in Berlin) were Büchner's 'Leonce und Lena' and above all the incidental music for Peter Weiss's internationally acclaimed play 'Die Verfolgung und Ermordung des Jean-Paul Marat dargestellt von einer Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton' (premiere 1964/65 with Ernst Schröder and Peter Mosbacher). Further theatre highlights: the incidental music for Gombrowicz's 'Operetta' (Berlin/Bochum, 1968), Peter Ustinov's 'The Unknown Soldier and His Wife' (Thalia Theater, Hamburg) and Bulgakov's 'Le Pourpre' (Sarah Bernhardt - Théâtre de la Ville, Paris 1972/73). Majewski also composed the music for the cabaret revue 'Zwei Berliner in Paris' with Wolfgang Gruner and Wolfgang Neuss (Komödie am Kurfürstendamm, 1959). In all he wrote about 80 scores for the stage.

Excerpt from the booklet of BCD16490 - Hans-Martin Majewski - Große deutsche Filmkomponisten Vol. 10

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