Eduard Behm (1862-1946)

[Wheesht]

Eduard Behm was a German pianist and composer.
His German wikipedia entry in translation (with some minor edits/additions):

The son of a physician in Stettin, he attended the Stettin Stadtgymnasium and graduated with his "Abitur". In Stettin, he received his first piano lessons from Karl Adolf Lorenz and Robert Seidel before becoming a student of Carl Reinecke and Oscar Paul at the Leipzig Conservatoire. After transferring to the Berlin University of the Arts to study with Oskar Raif and Friedrich Kiel, Behm took lessons from Johannes Brahms in Vienna for several months. After spending two years in his hometown of Stettin (as a reviewer and conductor) and in Erfurt (as a teacher at the Akademie der Tonkunst), Behm was director of the Schwantzerschersches Konservatorium in Berlin until 1901, later also working as a teacher and accompanist. In 1917, he was appointed Royal professor.
Behm, whose works were stylistically close to German Romanticism, received the Mendelssohn Prize for his symphony (in d) and the Bösendorfer Prize for his piano concerto. He also wrote three violin sonatas, a violin concerto, a piano trio, a clarinet quintet and a string sextet (with the Violotta designed by Alfred Stelzner), several songs and pieces for male choir, as well as the operas "Der Schelm von Bergen" (1899), "Marienkind" (1902) and "Das Gelöbnis" (1914). He also wrote the essays "Aus meinem Leben" (From My Life) (in: Deutsche Tonkünstlerzeitung IX) and "Kurze Selbstbiographie" (Short Autobiography) (in: Musik in Pommern I, 1932).
Brehm died in the composers' home of the Versorgungsstiftung der deutschen Komponisten (German Composers' Welfare Foundation) in Bad Harzburg.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I don't suppose we know where his mss. are. Neither the symphony nor the concertos appear to have been published.

[Wheesht]

No information has come my way so far. I see that his piano concerto is in E-flat major and was performed by the Vienna Philharmonic in 1899 in a concert with two other piano concertos, by Dohnányi and Brandts-Buys.  I wonder whether the archives of the Vienna Philharmonic would be a good point of enquiry.

[eschiss1]

His operas also include Meister Martin und seine Gesellen (libretto published 1892), Sarolta (ditto 1893) judging from the listings for him in the SBB catalogue. (The 192-page vocal score of Marienkind can be found at NYPL, Research Library.) (SBB also has listed his violin sonata, though under "Behm, Eduard" without life-dates, which is categorically a little confusing.)
Hrm, some lieder by Behm are listed at RISM (manuscript copies, though, not original manuscripts) so I guess that doesn't really help...

[eschiss1]

also, worked on the Peters edition of Schubert lieder with Friedländer (Friedländer/Behm in some library catalogs, at least for some volumes).

[Wheesht]

Curiously, the old SBB card catalogue lists the violin sonata as 'not in print yet'.

[eschiss1]

I think it was the premiere of Dohnanyi's first piano concerto. The German notes to the Naxos recording of Dohnanyi's concertos mentions the context... the three composers, I gather, contributed their works (the Dohnanyi in its original one movement form?, though the 3-movement form was what was performed) to a prize competition, they were the three prize-winners and had their works performed in that concert, Johann Nepomuk Fuchs conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.

[Wheesht]

A review of the concert in the Österreichische Musik- und Theaterzeitung (1899, no. 15) by one B. Lvovsky makes for interesting reading, not least because it suggests that Behm's concerto was to be published.

The Bösendorfer Prize Competition for the best piano concerto resulted in the audience voting (!) and awarding first prize of the three concertos selected by the jury to Ernst von Dohnányi's single-movement piano concerto with 706 votes, while Brandts-Buys, a Dutchman living in Vienna, came second with 607 votes and Eduard Behm third with 500 votes. The decisive factor for Dohnányi may well have been that the composer himself played his work, a modern, finely crafted but not entirely original composition, most excellently, while Mr. Behm had brought with him a mediocre player from Berlin to perform his highly polished and musically valuable but overly elaborate concerto. Incidentally, the piano played a more subordinate role in the performance of Mr. Behm's work. The last movement of his concerto was very successful and certainly has greater musical value than Brandts-Buys' work. In contrast, the Dutchman's concerto is very fluid, clear and very well written for the solo instrument, and will probably be the most frequently played of the three concertos after they are published. It does not contain any significant ideas, but it is diligently and skilfully crafted and makes a very pleasant impression in the composer's clean execution of the piano part.

[eschiss1]

I stand corrected, I suppose the Dohnanyi concerto was still in one movement at the time.
Possibly B. Lvovsky = composer and music journalist Břetislav Lvovský (1857-1910) (born Emil Pick in Prague, died in Vienna, Wikipedia (Czech).)

[Wheesht]

It hadn't occurred to me to do a search for B. Lvovsky, but it must be the Břetislav Lvovský you mention, see here.