Alwin Kulenkampff was a German violinist, conductor, and teacher. He was born in Bremen on January 23, 1898, and began studying the violin there with Ernst Wendel. He later studied with Leopold Auer in Dresden and graduated from the Berlin University of Music in 1915, where he studied with Willy Hess. He gave his debut solo recital in 1912.
From 1916 to 1919, Kulenkampff was concertmaster of the Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra. He performed widely, including a tour of the Soviet Union in 1929. His chamber-music partners included Edwin Fischer and Enrico Mainardi in a piano trio, and pianists Georg Solti and Wilhelm Kempff in duo performances.
In 1937, Kulenkampff gave the first performance of Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto, which had been found in an archive at Jelly d'Arányi’s initiative. Another premiere associated with him was the Second Violin Sonata by Ottorino Respighi. His recordings included Johannes Brahms’s sonatas with Solti, Beethoven’s Ninth Violin Sonata with both Solti and Kempff, and Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt.
Kulenkampff was a professor at the University of Music from 1923 to 1926 and again from 1931 to 1943. He moved to Potsdam in 1940 and went to Switzerland in 1943 or 1944. In 1944, he became a professor at the conservatory in Lucerne. His students included Ruggiero Ricci, Roman Matsov, and Victor Teva. A collection of his essays and notes, Violin Reflections, was published in 1952.
An annual international violin competition named for Georg Kulenkampff is held in Cologne. He died in Schaffhausen on October 4, 1948.