Leo Spies

Leo Spies (4 June 1899 – 1 May 1965) was a German composer and conductor. He was born in Moscow and was of Russian origin, later becoming active chiefly in German musical life. Spies was elected a member of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic in 1952 and received the National Prize of the GDR in 1956.

He received his early education in Moscow and emigrated with his family to Dresden. In 1916–1917 he studied music in Berlin at the Royal Academy of Arts with Engelbert Humperdinck and Robert Kahn.

At the beginning of his career Spies worked as a répétiteur in various German theatres and also at the Universum Film AG studio. In the late 1920s he became involved with the circle around composer Hanns Eisler and the workers’ choral movement, for which he wrote several choral works.

From 1928 to 1935 Spies served as conductor and musical director of the ballet at the Berlin State Opera, and from 1935 to 1944 he held the same type of position at the German Opera. After the Second World War he worked from 1947 to 1954 as a conductor at the Komische Oper. He was buried at the Dorotheenstadt Cemetery in Berlin.

Spies’s family included his brother Walter, an artist, and his sister Daisy, a ballet dancer. As a composer he was influenced by Russian Romanticism and by the music of Leoš Janáček. He wrote in nearly all major classical genres, including ballets, concertos, symphonies, chamber music, piano sonatas, and choral works.

Among his stage works are the ballets “Apollo and Daphne” (1936, Berlin), “Der Stralauer Fischzug” (1936), “Seefahrt” (1937), “Die Sonne lacht” (1942), “Pastorale” (1943), “Don Quijote” (1944), and “The Lovers of Verona” (1944, Leipzig). His vocal-orchestral works include cantatas such as “Turksib” (1932), “Red Square” (1957), and “G. Dimitrov” (1962), alongside two symphonies, concertos for instruments with orchestra, and various chamber ensembles.

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