Ottomar Wilhelmovych Berndt (July 1, 1896, Rivne - September 1941) was a Ukrainian composer and pianist of German descent.
He was born in Rivne. At the Hrabnyk cemetery in Rivne, there is a tombstone of Ottomar Berndt's father, Wilhelm (d. 26.11.1911), next to that of his mother, Rosyna (d. before 1939).[1] In addition to Ottomar, they had daughters Alia and Rosaliya. In the early twentieth century, the family probably lived in Kharkiv.
In 1916, Ottomar graduated from the First Kharkiv Real School. He graduated from the Kharkiv Music Academy with a degree in piano and composition, and for some time studied with Semen Bohatyrev. From 1921 he taught a compulsory piano course at the Kharkiv Music College. In 1926, Ottomar Vilhelmovych began teaching piano at the First Music Professional School.
He was a concertmaster of the Ukrainian choral chapel of the State Ukrainian Choir. He was friends with the composer Valentyn Borysov and became one of the founders of the Kharkiv Association of Proletarian Musicians. In the 1930s, he was the music editor of the publishing house "Art".
Member of the Union of Composers of Ukraine."[2]
Since 1922, he was married to the singer Anna Bilohorska, with whom he had a daughter, Lyalya.
After the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, at the end of June 1941, he was arrested as an ethnic German and probably shot.
Ottomar Berndt's family received a notification of his death in September 1941. In 1942, before the capture of Kharkiv, Anna and Lialia Berndt left for Germany, where they were placed in a camp for displaced Germans and were under surveillance. In the camp, Lyalya met and married a Frenchman named Raymond (Remy) Cabaret. Anna Andriiivna Belogorskaya-Berndt is buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Geneviève-de-Bois near Paris; Ottomar Berndt's grandchildren live in France.
Creative heritage
The basis of Berndt's compositional heritage is made up of mass songs ("March of the Dniprobud", "Red Army March", "They will rise on the Rhine and Thames: the March of the October Demonstrators" (words by Nikolai Bulatovich), "Psalm to Iron", the cycle "Tsaritsyn", etc.), children's songs, and arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs for choir.
Berndt also composed:
symphonic poem "Four Ashuga Songs",
Scherzo for symphony orchestra,
Concerto for piano and orchestra,
Piano pieces for children (1927),
three pieces for piano,
four children's pieces (all from 1930),
two dances for piano on the theme of Ukrainian folk songs (1934),
a suite on Crimean Tatar folk themes,
ballads for piano (1939),
pedagogical pieces for piano (1940-41),
preludes for piano on the theme of the Ukrainian folk song "Bless, Mother, Call Spring" and "Kozlyk",
a suite and lyrical pieces for violin and piano.
In 1940, he published a collection of performances for children's groups called "Spring" with Berndt's songs based on poems by Natalia Zabila, Maria Pryhara, H. Levina, and others.
