Eckhardt-Gramatté, Sophie Carmen

Sophie Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté – Triple Concerto for Trumpet, Clarinet, Bassoon, Strings, Timpani, and Percussion, E123

[Софи Кармен Экхардт-Граматте] (6 January 1899 [O.S. 25 December 1898], Moscow, Russian Empire – 2 December 1974, Stuttgart, Germany)

Composed: 1949, dedicated to Franz Litschauer and the Wiener Kammerorchester
Published: Vienna: Universal-Edition A. G., 1952
First Recording: September 11, 1950, by Franz Litschauer leading the Wiener Kammerorchester
(Helmut Wobisch, trumpet; Friedrich Wildgens, clarinet; Hugo Rottensteiner, bassoon);
this recording is preserved on Cassette 3 in the composer’s papers at the University of Manitoba.

Biography
S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatté was born Sophie-Carmen “Sonia” de Fridman-Kovcheskoi in 1899 to Catharina de Kochevskaia [Kotschewskaja in German], the daughter of a Russian military officer and his Parisian wife: educated at the fashionable Institut pour jeune filles nobles, Catharina played piano for Tsar Alexander II and Anton Rubinstein before escaping to Moscow to study at the Moscow Conservatory under Nicolas Rubinstein and Paul Pabst while working for Leo Tolstoy’s household. Catharina was the main governess for Tolstoy’s children, teaching them French and music for almost twenty years: she was married to the blind businessman Nicolas de Fridman until just before Sonia’s birth (although his paternity is doubtful), but they divorced due to her experiments with comparative religion (several kinds of Christianity, Judaism, and spiritualism. The young musician, named after her mother’s sister, was known professionally as Sonia Fridman until the age of twenty.

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