The Life and Career of Madeleine Friedheim (1869-1959)

Very excited to be heading to Adelaide this week to present at the 46th National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia 2023.

I'll be presenting a paper entitled "The Life and Career of Madeleine Sander Friedheim (1869-1959)." Madeleine Friedheim, wife of the famous pianist and Liszt pupil Arthur Friedheim (1859-1932), was an accomplished pianist, who studied with Carl Reinecke, Bruno Zwintschler and Martin Krause in Leipzig. She performed regularly alongside her husband, and played piano concerti under his baton. Later in life she decided to focus her attention on singing, gave numerous public vocal recitals of lieder, and even went on to sing at Covent Garden. In his autobiography, Arthur Friedheim tells how, when war broke out in 1914, Madeleine and their young son Eric were left behind in Germany while he found safety in America. Arthur accounts in some detail the miraculous tale of how he managed to secure passage to America, and the trials he was to face there. Left conspicuously absent was the story of Madeleine’s struggles during these difficult years, as an English woman in war-time Germany, with a four-year old son and an eighty-year-old mother to care for, suddenly become an enemy in her own neighbourhood, and cut off from the financial support of her husband. As it turns out, she managed to support herself by singing, and led a successful concert career performing all over Germany during the war. A truly remarkable person!

Photograph courtesy of International Piano Archives, University of Maryland!