Oscar Fetrás

Biography

He was born as Otto Kaufmann Faster 1854 in Hamburg. Early in his career he worked for Ferdinand Laeisz, founder of the Flying P-Liner. Once he became widely regarded as being on the same level as the revered Viennese waltz kings, he departed to conduct his own orchestra.

At the age of 26 his compositions attracted the attention of a Hamburg publisher and he made an anagramme of his name and formed the name Fetras from Faster. He was essentially of German descent and his musical talent did not come from his father Matthias Faster, who was an Hamburgian editor of a stock-exchangemagazine. The ancestors of Otto Faster came from Bützfleth (a locality of today's Stade near Hamburg). His grandfather a vessel-captain died in his sinking ship " Ceres ". The origin of his mother Amalie Margarethe, born Decker, is from the island Sylt

He soon rose to the position of conductor of the Uhlenhorster Fährhaus which was the most famous restaurant with ballrooms in Hamburg for which he composed his second most famous, but now forgotten work, Uhlenhorster Kinder. He was regarded as the most talented light music composer that Northern Germany ever produced and right from the start modelled his own composing on that of his idol, Johann Strauss Jr.. The Hamburgian business scene donated Fetras as a thank gift for his Waltz "Mondnacht auf der Alster" which made Hamburg most famous in the world, a bronze statue of the Roman god Hermes/Mercurius of the French artist Marius Montagne. This statue is the only thing out of the possession of Fetras which survived the war bombings and is now owned privately in Henstedt-Ulzburg near Hamburg/Germany.

It is interesting to note that it might have been Franz von Blon who was at that time the conductor of the Stadttheater Orchestra who introduced Moonlight on the Alster at the inaugural concert for the ball season in 1888. It was a sensation anyway and earned Fetrás the title of 'The Hamburg Waltz King'. Soon he was invited to tour Germany, Austria and France with his orchestra. He became personally acquainted with Johann Strauss. In 1904 he won a prize for his composition Frühlingsluft and later he wrote the excellent potpourri Reiche Mädchen (a reworking of Johann Strauss's 1897 operetta Der Göttin der Vernunft. The complete Die Göttin der Vernunft operetta has been released (2011) by Naxos Records, whilst the Reiche Mädchen Potpourri has been recorded by Marco Polo on their two CD production of Johann Strauss operetta potpourris. Fetrás remained well known and respected and though definitely a second rank composer in the Viennese style, he produced some 300 works. Otto Faster died January 1931 in Hamburg.

Legacy

In 1943, the Uhlenhorster Färhaus was destroyed by Allied bombing and with it the original score of his most famous work Moonlight on the Alster Op.60. The waltzes and music of Fetrás appear to have disappeared from the mainstream repertoire since WWII. The reason for this is primarily that many outlets of music publishers and music parts libraries which issued his material were destroyed during the bombing of Hamburg in World War II leaving currently no publisher actively issuing his material as well as destroying significant amounts of historic musical material. A current project aims to draw his compositions together via the IMSLP and make them more widely available once again.

In Hamburg-Rahlstedt the street Fetrasweg is named after him.

Works