Raimund Leo Pechotsch (June 1864 – 20 January 1941) was a composer of romantic and incidental musical theatre pieces. He was a Roman Catholic who also conducted liturgical music.[1]
Life
Pechotsch was born in Vienna, his father Adalbert Pechotsch being a composer of some note.[1] He studied at the Vienna Conservatoire and privately under Eduard Remenyi.He was one of three brothers who were members of the Austrian Strauss Band in 1880: Raimund on first violin; Adolf and Rupert both on contra-bass and trumpet.[2]The band had been contracted to perform at the Melbourne Exhibition of 1881.[3] He remained in Australia, but moved to Sydney.
He was in Brisbane then left for New Zealand 1889.[4]
Pechotsch was musical director for Australian stage producer Oscar Asche.[5] Raimund also worked for music publisher Palings and taught violin and piano in Sydney for many years.[6]
Pechotsch wrote incidental music for Walter Howard's 1910 play The Prince and the Beggar Maid[7] which was very successful in London and Australia.[8] He also wrote music (orchestrated for ensemble of twenty) to accompany "Pete" a Lewis Parker stage adaptation of Hall Caine's novel The Manxman.[9]
Later in life he remarried Alice McCarthy, the daughter of fellow Australian composer Dr William Charles MacCarthy.[10]
Works
- The cycling schottische
- A lost love with words by Frederick Augustus Packer
- Emu waltz (1896)
- For thee : song with violin obligato with words by Ernest Glanville-Hicks (father of Peggy Glanville-Hicks)
- Fire a shot for the Empire with foreign journalist Dulcie Deamer[11]
- To a butterfly with Australian poet Agnes Littlejohn (1865-1944)[12][13]
- Sympathy Waltz
- Gem Waltz
- Cradle song : Chant du berceau, written for Hall Caine's Pete[1]
- Romance, for violin with piano accompaniment
- Liebslied (1915), written after the death of his son[1]
- My love and I (boat song) with lyrics by Marie Van Brakkel
- Tears and pearls with lyrics by Henry C. de Witt
- Monsieur Beaucaire waltz
Family
On 17 September 1885 Pechotsch married Mary Elizabeth Curtis (born 1858 – 23 December), née Dolman, widow of Peter Campbell Curtis and mother of William John Curtis, KC.(1 September 1881 – 24 May 1940)[1]
- Raimund Adalbert Pechotsch, aka Jan Rudenyi, (born 1 August 1886 – February 1915) was feted as a violin prodigy,[14] having received his entire musical training from his father.
- He had ten years education in Europe and returned to Australia in his twenties.[15]
- Eric Joachim Pechotsch, aka Eric Mareo (30 September 1891 – 1958), as a boy was a charming singer of humorous songs[16] and later as musical director of the Ernest Rolls Revue and in 1935 of his own orchestra, a dandy who affected a long white cigarette holder and conducted with a tinsel-covered baton.[17] He was convicted in Auckland, New Zealand, of the murder of his second wife Thelma née Trott, who died 15 April 1935 by Veronal poisoning. Thelma's lesbian lover Freda Stark was a key witness at the trial.[18]
Around 1938 he married again, to the widow O'Hara, née MacCarthy, daughter of Dr Charles MacCarthy, an Irish Home Rule activist.[1] MacCarthy was frequently written M'Carthy.
He had two brothers in Australia:
- Rupert Joseph Pechotsch ( –1941) married Ada Euphemia Norris (c. 1863 – 15 March 1944) on 28 February 1882[19] lived Numurkah, Victoria, later Highett, Victoria insolvent 1916
- Adolf Pechotsch (c. 1856 – October 1902) married Matilda Eppin (c. 1861 – 13 March 1885); and a second time to the widow Waldock c. 1896.[20]