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Felix Weingartner Felix Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg[1] (June 2, 1863 – May 7, 1942) was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist. Weingartner was born in Zara, Dalmatia (today's Zadar, Croatia) to Austrian parents, and the family moved to Graz in 1868. His father died that same year. He studied with Franz Liszt in 1883 and was among Liszt's later pupils. Liszt helped produce Weingartner's opera Sakuntala for its world premiere in 1884 with the Weimar orchestra. According to the Liszt biographer Alan Walker, the Weimar orchestra of the 1880s was far from its peak of a few decades earlier — and the opera performance ended with orchestra going one way and chorus another. (Walker sources this to Weingartner's autobiography, published in Zürich and Leipzig in 1928-1929.) The same year, 1884, he became the director of the Kaliningrad Opera. In 1902, at the Festival of Mainz, Weingartner conducted the complete symphonies of Beethoven. From 1908 to 1927 he was the principal conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. In 1920 he was Professor of the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. In 1927 he was Director of the Basel Municipal Orchestra. In 1935 he conducted the world premiere of Georges Bizet's Symphony in C. He gave his last concert in London in 1940. Besides numerous other operas, Weingartner wrote seven symphonies (which have been recorded by cpo - classic production osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany), a sinfonietta, concertos for violin and for cello, orchestral works, at least four string quartets, quintets for strings and for piano with clarinet and other pieces. His musical style is reminiscent of early Romanticism. As a conductor Weingartner recorded perhaps the first complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies; he also wrote books on conducting, on Beethoven's symphonies and on the symphony since Beethoven; he issued editions of individual works of Gluck, Wagner and others, and a large edition of Berlioz's works. He once called Berlioz the "creator of the modern orchestra." Before Brian Newbould's more recent work he reconstructed Schubert's Symphony in E major, D. 729 in a version that received some performances and recordings; he also arranged works by a number of early Romantic masters for orchestral performance. Among his students as a conductor were Paul Sacher, Georg Tintner and Josef Krips. Works Symphonies Symphony No. 1 in G, op. 23 Symphony No. 2 in E-flat, op. 29 Symphony No. 3 in E, op. 49 with organ Symphony No. 4 in F, op. 61 Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. 71 Symphony No. 6 in B minor, op. 74, 'in Gedenken des 19. November 1828' (also Tragica. The second movement is based on sketches apparently meant for the scherzo or minuet movement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, the B minor D759.) Symphony No. 7, Choral op. 87 (1935–7) (in manuscript?) Operas Sakuntala, op. 9, 1884 Malakiwa, op. 10, 1886 Genesius, op. 14, 1892 Trilogy Orestes, op. 30, 1902 Kain und Abel, op. 54, 1914 Dame Kobold (after Pedro Calderón de la Barca; the same play inspired a concert overture by Carl Reinecke and an opera by Joachim Raff), op. 57, 1916 Die Dorfschule, op. 64, 1920 Meister Andrea, op. 66, 1920 Der Apostat, op. 72 — unpublished. |
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