Ferdinand David

Training under Louis Spohr and Moritz Hauptmann is recorded. August Wilhelmj, August Kömpel and Arno Hilf are recorded as having studied under Ferdinand David. The recorded working language is German. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are opera and classical music. Places of work recorded in the authority are Leipzig. Employment is recorded with University of Music and Theatre Leipzig.

Born in the same house in Hamburg where Felix Mendelssohn had been born the previous year, David was raised Jewish but later converted to Protestant Christianity. His sister Louise Dulcken was a concert pianist. David was a pupil of Louis Spohr and Moritz Hauptmann from 1823 to 1824 and in 1826 became a violinist at Königsstädtisches Theater in Berlin. In 1829 he was the first violinist of the string quartet of Baron Carl Gotthard von Liphart (father of Karl Eduard von Liphart) in Dorpat, and he undertook concert tours in Riga, Saint Petersburg and Moscow. In 1835 he became concertmaster (Konzertmeister) at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig working with Mendelssohn. In Leipzig, for about forty years, he was also the first violinist of the Leipzig Quartet. David returned to Dorpat to marry Liphardt's daughter Sophie. In 1843 David became the first professor of violin (Violinlehrer) at the newly founded Leipziger Konservatorium für Musik. David worked closely with Mendelssohn, providing technical advice during the preparation of the latter's Violin Concerto in E minor. He was also the soloist in the premiere of the work in 1845, and, with Clara Schumann, played the official premiere of Schumann's first violin sonata in Leipzig in March 1852. After Mendelssohn's sudden death, David was assigned Kapellmeister of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, a duty he fulfilled 1841–1842 and 1852–1854. He died suddenly in 1873, aged 63, while on a mountain excursion with his children, near Klosters in the Graubünden (Grisons) area of Switzerland.

On the recommendation of William Sterndale Bennett, with whom he had worked in Leipzig, David's son Paul David became the first Director of Music at Uppingham School from 1864–1908. In 1835, the year that Mendelssohn was assigned Kapellmeister of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, there was an audition for the Konzertmeister position. One of the other applicants was Karol Lipiński, the Polish virtuoso. Most probably, the childhood connection between David and Mendelssohn played a part in Mendelssohn choosing David as the Konzertmeister.