Richard Sahla

Richard Sahla (born 17 September 1855 in Graz, Austria; died 30 April 1931 in Bückeburg, Germany) was a concert violinist, conductor and composer.

Richard Sahla grew up in his hometown Graz, where he quickly acquired a reputation as child prodigy. He excelled on the violin and the piano. Aged 13 he started studying the violin as a pupil of Ferdinand David at the Conservatory in Leipzig, University of Music and Theatre Leipzig, today the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig. He finished as one of the most outstanding students of this world-famous institution. He played his debut concert aged eighteen at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig to rapturous applause for his "technically mature and musically exhilarating play". His friend Wilhelm Kienzl describes Sahla’s next steps in his autobiography. Both had studied composition under Wilhelm Mayer (also known as W. A. Rémy), whose students included the composers Ferruccio Busoni, Josef Gauby, Richard Heuberger, Emil von Reznicek and Felix Weingartner.

Having received his diploma at the Conservatory in Leipzig, the Mecca of violinists, the eighteen-year-old Sahla embarked on an impressive career as violin virtuoso. He quickly gained a reputation as one of the most talented violinists. "He elicits his Stradivari celestial sounds. Golden purity engages with the sweet scent of poetry!" That was how one critic expressed his enthusiasm in 1880 after a concert at the Vienna Royal Opera (Wiener Hofoper).

On 1. October 1875, aged twenty years, Sahla joined the court orchestra (Hofkapelle) of Schaumburg-Lippe as a first solo-violinist for eight months. After which he accepted the post of prime-concertmaster (Konzertmeister) in Gothenburg, Sweden. From 1878 to 1880 he was a member of the Orchestra of the Vienna Royal Opera where he was a celebrated soloist. The Viennese press praised him as an equal of the Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate. Sahla’s compositions for violin and piano: Spanischer Tanz, Nocturno Nr. 1 (B flat major) and Nocturno Nr. 2 (E major) are dedicated in reverence to Pablo de Sarasate.

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