Born in Hamburg, Niemann was the son of composer and virtuoso pianist Rudolph Niemann. His uncle, Gustav Adolph Niemann was a violinist and important musical figure in Helsinki. Walter Niemann studied with Engelbert Humperdinck as a youth in Leipzig. He then entered the Leipzig Conservatory where he was a pupil of Carl Reinecke. He pursued doctoral studies in musicology at the University of Leipzig under Hugo Riemann and Hermann Kretzschmar, earning a doctorate in 1901. His dissertation was on early ligatures and mensural music. Niemann first worked as a teacher in Hamburg then served as the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in Leipzig from 1904 to 1906. From 1907 through 1917 he was a writer and critic for the Neueste Nachrichten in Leipzig. He also taught during those years on the faculty of the Hamburg Conservatory. In 1927, H. Abert in the Illustriertes Musiklexikon styled Niemann "The most important composer for piano today, who understands how to make music both fine and colored, although he often strays into the salon." He died in Leipzig, aged 76.
Work
Niemann's compositions include 189 opus numbers, of which more than 150 are works for solo piano, chiefly of character pieces. He also composed violin sonata, several orchestral works, and some chamber music. Niemann was one of the very few German composers to explore Impressionist music. His works are characterized by color and exoticism, and the titles reflect interests in the past, and exotic subject matter on poetic titles. His book, "Masters of the Piano: past and present," published in 1919 is considered a classic. He also wrote popular biographies of composers; his biography of Brahms emphasized that composer's north German roots at the expense of his Viennese retirement and liberalism. As a reviewer he was outspoken in his criticism of "pathological" and "sensuous" composers like Richard Strauss, Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg, and was threatened in 1910 with a libel suit by composer Max Reger. He praised nationalists and folk-influenced composers like Hans Pfitzner, Sibelius, and Edward MacDowell, and was influential in popularizing Scandinavian composers in Germany. Following the second world war, Niemann's artistic viewpoint and consequently his work fell out of favor.
Edvard Grieg: Biographie und Würdigung seiner Werke
Das Nordlandbuch
Die Virginalmusik
Die Musik der Gegenwart und der letzten Vergangenheit bis zu den Romantikern, Klassizisten und Neudeutschen, Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin 1913, 303 pages.
Das Klavierbuch, kurze Geschichte d. Klaviermusik u. ihrer Meister, d. Klavierbaues u. d. Klavierliteratur. Mit Tab. über d. Klavierbau u. e. Übersicht über d. Klavierliteratur. Callwey Verlag, Munich 1907, 1930.
Meister des Klaviers, die Pianisten der Gegenwart und der letzten Vergangenheit. Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin 1919, 1921.
Brahms.
Mein Leben fürs Klavier. Autobiography, Ed. Gerhard Helzel, Staccato-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2008
