Alexander Schmuller
Alexander Schmuller was a Russian and Dutch violinist, conductor, and music critic of Jewish origin. He was born on 5 December 1880 in Mazyr, Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire, into a family from Lida in the Vilna Governorate. He died in Amsterdam on 29 March 1933.
Schmuller studied in Prague with Otakar Ševčík. From 1900 to 1904 he attended the Moscow Conservatory, studying with Ivan Gržimali, and from 1904 to 1908 he studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Leopold Auer. As a music critic, he contributed to the annual Musical Almanac, the journal Theatre and Art, Rech, and the St. Petersburg Gazette.
From 1908 he taught at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. He frequently performed in ensemble with Max Reger and was later remembered by Maria Yudina as one of the principal advocates of Reger's music, including during tours of the Soviet Union in 1923–1924. His repertoire was notably broad: it included violin concertos by Dittersdorf and Darius Milhaud, sonatas by Jean-Baptiste Senaillé and Ivan Kryzhanovsky, and concertos by Ferruccio Busoni and Rudolf Mengelberg that were praised by critics.
Beginning in 1914, Schmuller taught at the Amsterdam Conservatory and appeared regularly as a soloist with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. From 1926 he also conducted the orchestra. He was a friend of Willem Mengelberg, who occasionally accompanied him at the piano. From 1920 Schmuller and Leonid Kreutzer performed in Amsterdam's New Russian Trio, organized by Joseph Press. He led the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 1928 to 1930.
Schmuller also wrote for the press on musical matters. A posthumous collection of his articles and notes, On Music and Musicians, was published in 1933. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery of Muiderberg in Gooise Meren.