Wilhelm Kretschmann
Wilhelm Kretschmann was a Russian flutist and teacher of German origin. Born in Könnern, near Halle, he studied with Karl Vener and performed in German and Austrian orchestras before moving to Russia. These included the court orchestra of the Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Johann Strauss’s orchestra, and the court theater of the Dukes of Saxe-Meiningen. In Russia, he was known as Vasily Vasilyevich Krechman.
From 1882 to 1907, Kretschmann was a soloist with the Bolshoi Theatre’s opera and ballet orchestras in Moscow. He was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory from 1882 until his death in 1922; the article also identifies him as a professor there in 1883. He performed as a soloist and was regarded as an outstanding ensemble player.
Kretschmann was the first in Moscow to teach flute using the Boehm system and was a committed advocate of it. His students included Vasily Leonov, Vladimir Tsybin and Tsybin’s younger brother Peter, Nikolai Bakaleynikov, Fedor Levin, Alexander Stuchevsky, Vladimir Glinsky-Safronov, and Georgy Madatov. Nikolai Platonov recalled that Kretschmann’s teaching repertoire was limited largely to salon and virtuoso works, including pieces by Popp, Demersseman, Terschak, Briccialdi, and Doppler, but that his organized and persistent approach produced strong results, particularly in technical performance.
Tsybin remembered Kretschmann for his even, beautiful tone, especially in the low register, and his fluent technique across the flute’s range. Kretschmann played technically demanding flute parts in operas including Eduard Napravnik’s Dubrovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden, and Meyerbeer’s The Huguenots. He accepted only prepared students and did not teach embouchure; his instruction, Tsybin recalled, was to play cleanly and evenly.