I haven’t posted anything about Felix Weingartner for a long time. Some consider him to be the greatest conductor of the twentieth century. His tempi were definitive for many. Here he is conducting Brahms’s Fourth Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra. If you don’t know this piece, you should listen to it. It is one of great achievements of the German Romantic movement in music.
Felix Weingartner
June 2, 1863 – May 7, 1942
Paul Felix Weingartner, Edler (“Lord”, in English) von Münzberg was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist. Weingartner did much to shape the modern art of conducting. He studied piano and composition in Graz, Austria with the composer W.A. Remy. He received a stipend from the state, and in 1881 he went on to study philosophy at Leipzig University, later attending the Leipzig Conservatory where he made the acquaintance of Liszt. Liszt persuaded him to become a conductor and helped to produce Weingartner’s first opera, Sakuntala, at Weimar in 1884. In the same year he began his conducting career in Königsberg.
Thereafter, Weingartner moved around constantly: Danzig (1885-1887); as Hans von Bülow’s assistant in Hamburg (1887-1889); Mannheim (1889-91); Berlin’s Kaim Royal Opera Orchestra (1891-1898); the Vienna Opera, where he succeeded Mahler (1898-1903); Hamburg again (1912-14); Darmstadt (1914-1919); Vienna Volksoper and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (1919-1927). Over the same period, he toured Europe, making his first visits to London in 1898 and to the U.S. in 1905, where he conducted the Boston Opera Company for its 1912-1913 season. From 1927 to 1933, he was director of the Conservatory and Symphony Orchestra in Basel, Switzerland, and returned to the Vienna State Opera from 1935-1936. In his second period with the Vienna Opera he appeared tired, and resigned at the end of the season. In 1939, Weingartner was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.
Weingartner’s activities were not confined to conducting: he was also a prolific composer. His output includes eight operas, six symphonies, two concertos, chamber music and songs, though none of his works had more than a brief success. Together with Charles Malherbe, he edited the complete works of Berlioz and was one of the first to bring that composer’s works back into public favor. Weingartner’s arrangement of Weber’s Invitation to the Dance was recorded four times by him, and he also recorded his own orchestral arrangement of Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” piano sonata, Op. 106, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Weingartner was among the first great conductors to insist on a meticulous interpretation of the composer’s score and steady, moderate tempi. While in Hamburg, he clashed with Hans von Bülow, whom he criticized for romantic exaggeration and wayward performances. In 1895, Weingartner wrote a book, On Conducting, in which he accused von Bülow of “wanting to divert the attention of the audience from the music to himself.”
Weingartner was the first conductor to make commercial recordings of all nine Beethoven symphonies, and the second (to Leopold Stokowski in Philadelphia) to record all four Brahms symphonies. In 1935 he conducted the world premiere of Georges Bizet’s long-lost Symphony in C. His crisp classical conducting style contrasted with the romantic approach of many of his contemporaries such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, whose conducting is now considered “subjective” on the basis of tempo fluctuations not called for in the printed scores; while Weingartner was more like Arturo Toscanini in insisting on playing as written. His 1935 recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, for instance, sounds much more like Toscanini’s 1936, 1938, 1939 and 1952 renditions (only the last of which was recorded in a studio rather than at a concert) than Furtwängler’s far more expansive readings.
Johannes Brahms
May 7, 1833 – April 3,1897
Brahms was the son of a lower middle-class family. He was born in Hamburg of the early 19th century; a scruffy port city filled with exotic traders and seedy traffickers alike. Although in an earlier era, it had been home to a number of fine musicians, it was, at the midpoint of the 19th century, as unseemly and unlikely a place for a future legend to arise as one might imagine. Although admittedly he was no child prodigy, he occasionally likened himself to the young Mozart. Brahms would tell listeners on later occasions that his father, a trained musician himself, often arranged Brahms’s early concerts in the public bars of the town. Bars of that place and era doubled as houses of ill-repute; it was an entirely shocking inverse portrait of Brahms’ life overlaid by evoking the measure of natural and wholesome adoration Wolfgang’s father’s evidenced for his child in securing him appointments to all the finest courts of Europe.
Brahms’s importance to German culture was significant even in his own day. He was a composer made for Vienna of the Belle Époque. He cast an exceedingly large shadow: stretching from his training in the traditions of the Classical era into the later-still Romantic era. Although of modest origins, Brahms connects together a number of rich threads in the musical world.
He is remembered for his abilities as a composer and musician. Certainly, his requiems, cantatas, and symphonies are now considered fundamental listening. Over the course of his career, however, he became the defender of the traditional Classical style and his legacy is the imprint of his influence on the style and substance of his fellow composers. This was a struggle not easily nor early attained.
Brahms did not achieve success in his youth. As a performing pianist and as a composer, he made his living playing in cafes and composing hack-works for local performing groups. His father had wanted him to become an orchestral musician, but Brahms soon demonstrated a clear preference and talent for the pianoforte and, at age seven, he began studies with a pupil of Eduard Marxen, and eventually with Marxen himself. Marxen’s deep understanding and fondness for the music of Bach and Beethoven influenced Brahms to a commitment toward the traditional styles of the mid-nineteenth century, and a lasting rejection of later nineteenth century modernism as represented by the music of Wagner and Liszt.
While still in his early twenties, Brahms met Joseph Joachim, the renowned violinist and the two became fast friends and often made joint concert tours through Europe. Through Joachim, Brahms met Franz Liszt, and also Robert and Clara Schumann (who were to have perhaps the most profound influence on his musical and composing career). He remained close to the Schumanns, and spent much time with them, especially during Robert’s decline into serious mental illness. After the death of Robert he remained close to Clara. Initially he was very much in love with Clara, fourteen years his senior, though she did not return his love. However they remained close friends for the remainder of her life. She premiered many of his compositions on her frequent concert tours. An affair with Agnes Siebold in 1858 at age 25 was the closest he would ever come to marriage.
Brahms had hoped to secure a permanent conducting position, or conservatory appointment, but though he secured several positions in various places, each failed for some reason, and he never succeeded in this ambition. In 1868 he settled permanently in Vienna, where he had established a wide circle of friends among the most famous and successful musical and cultural figures of his time.
The premier of his German Requiem in 1869, more than any of his previous works established his reputation as a significant composer. Throughout his career he composed prolifically for almost all instrumental combinations, as well as works for piano, chorus and solo voice. Many still appear regularly on today’s concert programs. Most popular today perhaps are his German Requiem, his four symphonies, the Alto Rhapsody, and his chamber music. Brahms died at age 64 in Vienna, on April 3, 1897, of cancer of the liver, only a few months after the death of his dear friend, Clara Schumann.