Gorm Busk

As president of the International Friedrich Kuhlau Society (IFKS) of which I have been elected by my friend Toshinori Ishihara from Japan who is the originator of the foundation of this society, I want to welcome you to IFKS.

The German born composer Friedrich Daniel Rudolph Kuhlau (1786-1832) who came to Denmark in 1810 where he stayed until his death is together with C.E.F. Weyse (1774-1842) the most important Danish composer in the first half of the 19the century. He is known principally for his many works for piano (especially the easy Sonatinas still popular in instruction of piano students) and flute (for 1 to 4 flutes and for flute and piano) and for his dramatic music, consisting of operas (of the Singspiel type with spoken dialogue between the music numbers) and theatre music, of which the operas Røverborgen (The Robbers’ Castle) and Lulu and his theatre music for the romantic, national play Elverhøj (The Elf Hill ), his most important work, should be mentioned.

Outside Denmark he is known mostly in Germany but recently in Japan too, partly because of his flute music, partly because of the production in the spring of 2000 of his great fairytale opera Lulu, which in 2001 is planned to be performed in his native town Uelzen in North Germany and later on in Königsberg and St. Peterburg.

Kuhlau’s music is today gaining more and more ground, and this lucky development has been the stimulus to the foundation of the International Friedrich Kuhlau Society (IFKS). Its main purpose is the propagation of the music of Kuhlau by giving concerts and by publication of some of his most important works.

Gorm Busk
November 1999

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Oper "Lulu" was not perfomed in Uelzen, nor Königsberg and St. Petersburg.