Willie and Johanna Hess

 

A Wunderkind is a German word for "wonder child", a term for a child prodigy who exhibits precocious talents or skills usually acquired only after reaching adult maturity. Though it's not an uncommon German loanword its usage in English has changed in the 21st century to include a much wider variety of activities that children may excel in. Exceptionally bright children are now found in math, science, language, chess, athletics, and more. But in the 19th century a Wunderkind almost always referred to a gifted young musician. A youngster whose phenomenal talent elicited awe from the people who heard them perform. 

The classic example is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) whose musical genius on keyboard and violin was evident at age five when his father began presenting him in concerts to royalty. By the time he became a young adult he had toured Europe as a performer and was celebrated as a rising composer. But Wolfgang had a sister, Maria Anna Mozart, commonly known as Nannerl (1751–1829), who earned a right to be called a Wunderkind, too. Unfortunately her talents were never allowed to develop and she never shared in the great fame that her brother achieved. 

Today I present another brother and sister duo, two musical prodigies who once posed for a camera in Aachen, Germany. Their names were Wilhelm and Johanna Hess. Johanna played piano and Willie played the violin. They were very talented musicians.

Johanna sits on the right with her elbow resting on a piano keyboard. She was the eldest child of Julius and Lina Hess of Mannheim where she was born in 1858. Mannheim was the second-largest city in Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, the state capital. Her brother Wilhelm Hess stands on the left wearing a neat velvet jacket and holding his violin. "Willie or Willy"  was born the following year in 1859. Their father Julius Hess was an accomplished musician on violin and viola, and just as Wolfgang's father, Leopold Mozart, had done, Julius naturally became his children's first music teacher.  

In 1866 he took his family, now with five children, to New York City where he found work playing in the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, then one of the best orchestras in the United States. It did not take long before Thomas recognized Johanna and Willie's fantastic talents and arranged to include them in concerts of his orchestra. 

The first was a memorial concert on 21 Nov 1868 for Edmund Remack, music critic and editor of the New York Abend-Zeitung, who had recently died. This benefit concert was presented to raise money for Remack's wife and children. Willie and Johanna played "La Favorite", a duo for piano and violin by Donizetti. A week later on 29 November they played with Theodore Thomas' Orchestra again with Willie playing a solo piece entitled "Fantasie on La petite tambour" by David. The concert was reviewed in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

    Willie Hess performed a solo on the violin, "Le Petit Tambour." For a boy ten years old he shows wonderful precocity of genius on this instrument.  He plays with the ease, exactness and almost the masterly touch and skill of Ole Bail or Paganini.  He was interrupted with frequent applause.  A delightful feature of the evening, and perhaps the most delightful feature to many, was the appearance of Miss Joanna [sic] (nine years old) and Willie Hess in a duo for the piano and violin on "Themes from La Favorita."  If his performances on the violin betrayed high musical genius so did [her] playing on the piano. [Her] touch had all the delicacy of the maturest cultivation. They were most enthusiastically applauded, as they richly deserved.

Over the next 4 weeks in December 1868 the Hess children participated in a concert each week. On 17 December 1868 Johanna and Willie appeared on the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music f or a "Grand Gala Concert" with Theodore Thomas' "unrivalled orchestra."

 

Brooklyn Daily Eagle
17 December 1868

Jenny Twitchell Kempton 
contralto, circa 1860
Source: Wikipedia

 

The program featured Mrs. Jenny Kempton, the "Favorite Prima Donna Contralto". Jenny Twitchell Kempton (1835–1921) was born in Dublin, New Hampshire and at an early age demonstrated an extraordinary vocal range. As a young girl she moved to Boston where in 1850 at age 15 she sang the lead solos in the first American performances of Felix Mendelssohn's oratorios "St. Paul" and "Elijah" with the Handel and Haydn Society. After becoming a very accomplished singer in Boston she moved to New York for further vocal study. There she was engaged as a soloist by Father Kemp's Old Folks Concerts Company and for nearly three years toured the country. By 1868 she had already performed many concerts in New York, San Francisco, and most recently a two year tour of Europe. Having the Hess children share the solo bill on her concert was no mean feat.

On this concert Willie Hess played a violin solo entitled "La Petit Tambour" with the orchestra, and later a Grand Duet for Piano and Violin (William Tell) by Osborn and Beriot. Two days later on a Saturday afternoon they performed at Steinway Hall, a 2,500 seat concert hall and showrooms for Steinway & Sons pianos. Recently completed in October 1866 it was already establishing a reputation, in the words of one critic, as "the cradle of classical music in this country".

A reviewer for the Buffalo, NY Commercial newspaper wrote a review:

    

        NEW YORK, Dec. 21st.

    On Saturday afternoon, Dec. 19, the Hess children gave a matinee at Steinway Hall, and were assisted by-F. Bergner ('cello), Mme. Gazzaniga and Julius Hess (violin). The programme was a short one, and included the lst movement from one of Mozart's string quartets: In it these talented children appeared to better advantage than in any other selection; Miss Joanna—in particular—was very accurate as regards time, and she also exhibited some taste and an attempt at shading. I must repeat the opinion that it is unwise to bring prodigies before the public. It is my honest belief that such a course—in most cases—does incalculable injury to the advancement of the innocent victims, while the performance is productive of but little pleasure to the public. Let Mr. Hess take warning and discontinue the forcing process.

The website Music in Gotham provides a timeline of Willie and Johanna's performances in New York. Over the next four years they played over 19 concerts in the city with many more on tour to Philadelphia and around the northeast. Their programs featured more ambitious music of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and other early Romantic era composers. Reviewers praised their accomplishments but cautioned their father Julius Hess against pushing them too hard. In this era there were, as yet, no laws concerning child labor and many cities were beginning to see increasing public complaints about exploitation of child entertainers and exhibiting them in unsavory and noisome theaters at late hours. 

However in the summer of 1872 Julius Hess decided to avoid that situation and take Willie and Johanna back to the Old World for better musical study. Their first stop was Amsterdam followed by Leipzig, Germany where they performed at the famous Leipzig Gewandhaus. Johanna was age 15 and Willie was 14, though the newspapers knocked a year off each of them to earn every Wunderkind day. 

A correspondent for London's Musical Standard newspaper wrote a review of Willie's and Johanna's debut concert at the Gewandhaus, an event the reviewer noted as highly unusual for having two juvenile artists from America play for Leipzig's highly critical patrons. On 9 July 1873 he wrote:

    The reputation they had already made in the United States and in Holland had naturally raised great expectations in the minds of the critics of this good city, and it is most gratifying to be able to state that in no respect were these expectations disappointed; for the performance of the young lady upon the piano, and of her brother upon the violin, were most praiseworthy.  Not only do they excel in solos, but also in trios, quartets, &c.  For instance, Mozart's trio in Es dur was most artistically rendered by the brother and sister, assisted by one of the best second violins of Leipzig. 

    Johanna Hess is gifted with a most delicate and caressing touch which, joined to great taste for the art to which her young existence is now wedded, went far towards securing for her the sympathies of the audience.  The boy displayed considerable technical skill, in his artistical manipulation of his violin; and as he is, likewise, keenly alive to the beauties contained in the works which he undertakes to render, he carried all before him.  Many an older violinist. would lack the ease and faultless precision with which he gave the staccatos and arpeggios.  And what a soft and expressive way he has of interpreting an adagio movement; for a display of his facility in this direction Spohr's ninth concerto for the violin afforded him a most favourable opportunity.

    The concert was not a crowded one at all, but nobody expects a full room in the summer months as everybody of note being out of town during June, July, and August.  The applause which fell to the lot of the two young artistes was of a most encouraging nature, however, and they must have been satisfied with the comparatively brilliant success they gained.  Whether their future will be as bright as the present predicts it to be it is difficult to say, but it can he safely asserted that should they only continue to be as proficient as they now are they will ever command the attention of the public. 

In the following year of 1874 the Hess family made several visits to the city of Aachen, a spa city near Germany’s borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, about halfway between Brussels and Bonn. They gave several concerts in Aachen that year, usually described as "aus New York" or from "Amerika". It was here that Johanna and Willie posed for their carte de visite photo at the studio of Carl Billotte of 24 Theaterstrasse in Aachen. On the back someone wrote their names in ink:

Johanna &

Willie Hess

This photo of Johanna and Willie resembles many other souvenir photos sold to promote professional concert artistes and theatrical entertainers, though I'm sure it still made their grandparents proud. If I am correct about the date then Johanna would be age 16 and Willie age 15, just beginning young adulthood and leaving their Wunderkind years. 

Zweibrücken, Germany
Pfälzische Blätter
15 October 1874

Besides Leipzig and Aachen I also found notices of their concerts in several cities in Germany, Belgium, France and even in Wien, Austria, too. 

In October 1874 Willie and Johanna played an Instrumental-Concert at the Stadthaus Salle in Zweibrücken, Germany. Both played individual solos and also in chamber music with their Vater Julius Hess on viola, and their younger brother Friedrich Hess on cello. There was music by Mozart, Vieuxtemps, Rubenstein, Beethoven, and Spohr.

The Hess family surely did not perform for free but they seem to have deliberately avoided the music hall circuits played by other family bands of this era. Julius Hess helped his children find the good teachers for their instruments and both Johanna and Willie benefited from advanced study with some of the best musicians of this era.  

In 1876 Willie Hess traveled to Berlin where he became a student of the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) who brought Willie's musicianship to its highest standards. After two years in Berlin he was hired as principal leader and first violinist with the Oper Frankfurt. While there Willie Hess married Ida Sophie Johanna Traut in 1885. 

In 1886 he left that post to assume a violin professorship at the Rotterdam Conservatorium which he held for two years. 

Willie Hess, circa 1890
Source: Wikimedia

In 1888 Willie Hess crossed the English Channel to become leader of The Hallé Orchestra in Manchester where he also became the principal professor of violin at the Royal Manchester College of Music. In 1895 he moved again for an appointment as principal professor of violin at the Conservatorium der Musik in Cologne, Germany. While there he led a string quartet, a chamber ensemble form that Joachim had help make popular for public concerts.

Guerzenich String Quartet from Cologne:
Willy Hess (1st violin), Friedrich Grützmacher Younger (cello),
Josef Schwartz (viola), Willy Seibert (2nd violin)
circa 1895—1899
Source: Wikimedia

I interrupt this story to explain that Hess' proper German forename—Wilhelm—does not seem to have been used much during his career as either an adult or young boy. In America and England he was usually Master Willy Hess in his early years, but the spelling was not consistent, sometimes Willy or Willie. Since the annotation on the back of the photo has Willie Hess, and the German press used that spelling, that is the form I've used for this story, even though his Wikipedia entry uses "Willy Hess".  I'm sure he found this a constant nuisance during his lifetime. Perhaps this nickname confusion was something he shared with Kaiser Wilhelm besides the mustache.

Boston Herald
19 June 1904

In 1904 Willie Hess was invited by Wilhelm Gericke (1845–1925) the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to become its new concertmaster. Willie accepted and moved to Boston where he held the position for six seasons and also taught violin at Harvard University. However as the orchestra's concert season was only for a few months each year, his schedule allowed for travel back to Europe to play other concert engagements. It seems that Willie's  wife chose to stay in Germany during his time in Boston. Sadly she died in February 1909 while he was away in America. This may have influenced his decision to leave the Boston Symphony Orchestra and return to Berlin in 1910. There he was appointed premier violin instructor at the Royal Academy of Music (Königliche Akademische Hochschule für ausübende Tonkunst), the same teaching position of his teacher Joseph Joachim. 

Of course the whole world of music was turned upside down by the onslaught of World War One. In Britain and France many German and Austrian musicians were ostracized and Germanic music was banned. In Boston the German-born conductor Karl Muck (1859–1940), who in 1906 succeeded Wilhelm Gericke as music director of the Boston Symphony, was falsely accused of disloyalty as the United States entered the Great War in 1917. Despite having a valid Swiss passport Muck was arrested and from March 1918 until August 1919 he was interned in a prison camp in Georgia as an enemy alien. Upon his release in 1919 Karl Muck and his wife were immediately deported from the United States. 

Fortunately Willie Hess was able to avoid such harsh circumstance and he retained his position at the Berlin Academy for several more years after the war. In 1919 he married Anna Katharina Hilgers.  

During his time in Berlin Willie Hess premiered several musical works written for him, including some for viola. Considering that he was a violin professor in the Netherlands, England, America, and Germany, his influence as a teacher was very broad and many of his violin students went on to successful careers as concert artists.

 

Willie Hess died in Berlin on 17 February 1939 at age 79.

But this is a story about two Wunderkinder.

Willie's sister Johanna Hess was clearly an equal partner in their early development as musical artists even though her instrument was very different. While her brother naturally concentrated on violin due to their father's instrument, Johanna's training on piano was clearly not neglected. She was always given equal promotion on their concerts with just as many solo opportunities. When Willie went to Berlin she came too to study with Waldemar Bargiel. There she had the privilege to continue as piano accompanist for him, his fellow students, and even for Joseph Joachim, himself. As she matured she began taking engagements as an accompanist for other instrumentalists and vocalists.  

In November 1885 the Hess family ensemble split up when Johanna Hess married Albert Henry Burr of Chicago. Albert was a physician who trained at Chicago Medical College and served as an attending physician at Provident Hospital. He was a lecturer on Rhinology and Laryngology at the Post-Graduate Medical School of Chicago and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He later became Medical Inspector for the Chicago Board of Education.

Unlike most women of this era who gave up their professional careers upon marriage, Johanna continued to work as a music teacher and piano accompanist in Chicago. In the 1890s a new metropolis was rising out of the ashes of Chicago's Great Fire of 1871. With the influx of new immigrants it was rapidly becoming an important center for opera, theater, and musical arts of all kinds. Johanna must have been pleased when in 1891 the conductor Theodore Thomas, who had first introduced her and her brother to New York audiences, moved to Chicago to start a new orchestra that would eventually be the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

Her professional name became Mrs. Johanna Hess-Burr and she developed a specialty in training vocalists. Her name became connected to several prominent opera singers whom she accompanied at private recitals, a popular entertainment in America's Gilded Age society. 

In the first weeks of December 1895 Johanna Hess-Burr was a very busy pianist. On Friday, December 6, she traveled 300 miles to Dayton, Ohio to accompany a soprano in a recital at the Women's Christian Association Auditorium. The following Monday, December 9, she was one of seven soloists listed for a "Grand Military Band Concert" presented by the First Regiment Band at Chicago's huge municipal auditorium. On Tuesday, December 10, she played another recital in Chicago for two opera singers, a soprano and a baritone. It would be repeated two days later on Thursday, December 12. 

In between on Wednesday, December 11, she presented her own recital at Chicago's new Steinway Hall on East Van Buren Street. She would accompany Mr. George W. Fergusson, baritone, and Mr. Max Bendix, the concertmaster of Theodore Thomas's Orchestra.            

  

The reviewer for Chicago's Inter-Ocean newspaper wrote one of most succinct descriptions of the role an accompanist plays in music. He also praised Mrs. Johanna Hess-Burr in a way that lets us appreciate her talent even though we were not there.  

JOHANNA HESS-BURR CONCERT. 

    In spite of the inclement weather, the friends of Mrs. Johanna Hess-Burr gathered in force at Steinway Hall Wednesday evening, the occasion being a concert, where the name of the talented piano accompanist headed the list of artists. instead of, as usual, having a modest position below the others.  Those assisting were George W. Ferguson, barytone. and Max Bendix, violinist. 

    Frequenters of the concert-room do not appreciate the subtle beauties of skillful accompaniment; becoming accustomed to its presence. they take it as a matter of course.  But the artists know how rare is the ability to follow and to lead, as the case may require, giving to the caprice of the virtuoso the earnest attention that he reserves for his composer alone.  It is a delicate task. requiring a peculiarly adaptable temperament, with sympathy, refinement of feeling, and above all, perception, both quick and keen.  Mrs. Hess-Burr possesses these requirements at their best and has used them so well that her reputation has crossed the Atlantic. 

    The selections given last evening were such as to enable the player to set forth her varied abilities, although not once did she intrude her tone over that of the soloist.  She was accompanying.  Enough is said about Mr. Bendix and the handsome young barytone on other occasions to warrant on this no more than the mention of their names; suffice it, their work was up to the high standard they aim to sustain.  Let it be written of last evening's concert that the sympathetic accompaniments of Mrs. Hess-Burr were helped to great effectiveness by the efforts of the soloists.  The sonata for piano and violin provided a larger opportunity.  Unquestionably the pianist would have achieved distinction as a concert soloist had she chosen this field. 

Johann Hess Burr died at her home in Dixon, Illinois on 8 April 1928 after a long illness. She was age 70. She was survived by her husband, Dr. Albert H. Burr; a daughter, Mrs. Burr-Benson of New York; and a son, Walter A. burr of Evanston, Illinois. 

* * *

My photo of Johanna and Willie Hess is a charming portrait of two talented siblings. Vintage photographs of young violinists from 1860-1890 are pretty ordinary but photos of pianists from this era with their instrument are uncommon. Though the second half of the 19th century became an exciting time in music when the piano became the premier solo instrument, thank Mr. Steinway, and soloists became true concert hall celebrities, I've rarely encountered a photo like this, even if it's just a glimpse of a keyboard.

But without that simple annotation I might never have discovered Johanna's and Willie's identity or their remarkable history as musicians. Unlike many other family ensembles of this time the Hess children evidently had very capable parents, especially their father, Julius Hess, who provided all his children, eight in total, with instrumental training and artistic inspiration. Younger brothers Friedrich Hess, a cellist, and Alfred Hesse, a violinist, both became noted principal players in major orchestras. 

Though I was impressed with Willie's achievements as a concertmaster and teacher, it was Johanna's career path that most surprised me. According to her obituary she accompanied a long list of celebrated singers and violinists including "Melba, Nordica, Eames, Brema, Schumann-Heink, Bispham, Campanari, Ysaye, Manteau, Sauret, and many others." Great soloists know that their success depends on the finetuned artistry and wide expertise of their music partners. Undoubtedly that was something Willie learned to appreciate in Johanna when he placed his hand on her shoulder that day in Aachen.

This story needs some music
to illustrate the idea of a Wunderkind.
Here is Jinxuan Zhang, Violin, 12 Years Old
playing a Scherzo and Tarantella.
I suspect his mother is accompanying him on piano.

It was published on YouTube in 2021.

And here is the Breshears String Quartet playing
Beethoven's String Quartet No. 1, Op. 18, mvts. 3 & 4.

They are called the Stars Aligned Siblings (ages 8, 11, 12, 13)

Dustin Breshears, violin I

Valery Breshears, violin II

Colin Breshears, viola

Starla Breshears, cello
The video was released in October 2020.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where brothers and sisters are always special