Robert Hausmann

He was the cellist for the Joachim Quartet and taught at the Berlin Königliche Hochschule für Müsik.

The Hausmann family had played a prominent role in civic and cultural life of the city of Hanover since the eighteenth century.

Robert's great-uncle Bernhard (1784-1873) was an important art collector and amateur violinist whose memoirs, Erinnerungen aus dem 80 jährigen Leben eines hannoverschen Burgers Hannover (1873) provide a detailed account of his many activities during an eventful period in Hanover's history.

Joachim introduced him to the great Italian cellist and teacher Carlo Alfredo Piatti (1822-1901), who taught him in London in 1871 and also at his estate at Cadenabbia on Lake Como, Italy.

He then joined the string quartet of Count Hochberg in Silesia from 1871 to 1876, when he was appointed instructor of cello at the Berlin Hochschule.

After they first played together in 1883, he was a frequent guest among Brahms's circle of friends who had private performances in their homes.

Most importantly, Hausmann and Joseph Joachim were the two soloists for whom Brahms wrote the Double Concerto in A minor, Op.

Besides the Quartet, Hausmann was a founding member of a piano trio group, made up of his colleagues at the Hochschule, Heinrich de Ahna (with Emanuel Wirth replacing de Ahna after he died in 1892) and the pianist Heinrich Barth.

However, in 1889 they started playing "popular chamber music evenings" in the much larger Philharmonie, where they usually filled the 2000-plus seats.

[7] His students included Friedrich Koch (teacher of Boris Blacher and Paul Kletzki), Wallingford Riegger,[8] Philipp Roth, Percy Such, Hugo Dechert, Otto Lüdemann, Agustín Rubio, Lucy Campbell, Arthur Williams, and others.

It was later owned by the Russian master Edmund Kurtz (principal cello of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra).

Robert Hausmann died in Vienna in January 1909, aged 56, after playing a recital of Beethoven's Cello Sonatas with Marie Baumeyer in Graz the previous evening.

Donald Tovey had played chamber music with Joachim and Hausmann during their last years, and his Elegiac Variations for cello and piano, Op.