Musicatlas
Music
- Ten Lieder for soprano voice and piano accompaniment
- "Aire de bambuco" (bambuco is a dance from the Colombian Andean region, with a peculiar rhythm)
- "Sara Cecilia", pasillo for piano (the "pasillo" is another type of dance from the Colombian Andean region)
- Rapsodia concertante Some chamber music for strings and piano
Life
Hans Federico Neuman, whose original name was Johann Friedrich Neümañ was born in Barranquilla. His father, Willem Tell, came from Curaçao, his mother, Zoila Rosa Del Castillo, was Colombian. He started piano lessons as a child with maestro Jose Vasquez-Pedrero and did harmony and composition studies with maestro Pedro Biava (maestro Biava’s son, Luis, is First Second Violin in the Philadelphia Orchestra in Washington D.C. and a teacher at Temple University). Neuman married Sara Emilia De la Hoz and had one single daughter, Sara Cecilia (little me, 55 now!). In 1952 Neuman went with his family to Bogota, where he played with groups in restaurants and acquired a vast knowledge of music from all over the world. He also had a duet with violinist Gustav Kolbe (who played at the München Philharmonic under Celibidace for many years, and is a fan of Wagner’s Ring, which he had to play so many times at Bayreuth’s Spielhaus. Kolbe retired and is now living in Bogota).
At maestro Biava’s retirement from the School of Beaux Arts in Barranquilla, my father was called to replace him. So, after 12 years he came back to his homeland. He had been a secondary school teacher in Bogota, too. He directed the School from 1964 to 1970, when he was called by professor Andres Pardo-Tovar (lawyer and music historian, contributor to the Historia Extensa de Colombia in the area of music), who was at the head of the Radiodifusora Nacional de Colombia (the main national broadcasting station in the country) where my father led several programs on music appreciation. He also taught Music Appreciation and Music History at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Following his retirement in 1983, he came back to Bar ranquilla after a brief tour in Europe with his wife, and became a programmer at Uninorte FM Stereo, conducting a program similar to those he led in Bogota. He died aged 74.
Neuman was also an accomplished translator of Italian poetry, and a poet himself. As a musician, I have never met a better accompanist nor sight reader than him. As a pianist, he had the most beautiful swing for American, Brazilian and all that popular music never to be forgotten. He had an excellent, subtle (some times not so subtle) sense of humor which he expressed only when he was among friends. I still miss him.