(Paul) Felix (von) Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg[1] (June 2 1863 – May 7 1942) was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist.
Biography
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 Wilhelm Mayer (who used the pseudonum of W. A. Rémy and also taught Ferruccio Busoni) and in 1881 went to Leipzig to study philosophy, but soon devoted himself entirely to music, entering the Conservatory in
1883 and also studying under Franz Liszt in Weimar: he 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 Königsberg Opera. From
1885-1887 he was Kapellmeister in Danzig, then until
1889 in Hamburg, and until 1891 in Mannheim. From 1891 he was Kapellmeister of the Royal Opera and conductor of symphony concerts in
Berlin; he resigned from the Opera, though continuing to conduct the Symphony concerts, and
settled in Munich, where he incurred the enmity of Rudolf
Louis and Ludwig Thuille.
In 1902, at the Festival of Mainz, Weingartner conducted the complete symphonies of
Beethoven. From 1908 to 1911 he was the principal conductor of the Vienna Hofoper succeeding Gustav Mahler; he retained the
conductorship of the Vienna Philharmonic until 1927.
From 1912 he was again Kapellmeister in Hamburg, but resigned in 1914
and went to Darmstadt as general music director. In 1919-20 he was conductor of the
Vienna Volksoper. In 1920 he was Professor of the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. From 1927 to 1934 he was
music director of the Sinfonieorchester Basel. He gave his last concert in
London in 1940 and died in Winterthur,
Switzerland two years later.
As a conductor Weingartner recorded perhaps the first complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies. In 1935 he conducted the world premiere of Georges Bizet's Symphony in C.
Among his students as a conductor were Paul Sacher, Georg
Tintner and Josef Krips.
Weingartner was married four times, to Marie Juillerat (in 1891), Baroness Feodora von Dreifus (1903), the mezzo-soprano
Lucille Marcel (1912; she died in 1921) and the actress Roxo Betty Kalisch (1922).
As Composer and Editor
Despite his lifelong career as a conductor Weingartner regarded himself as equally if not more importantly a composer. Besides
numerous other operas, Weingartner wrote seven symphonies which have been recorded by cpo -
classic production osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany, a
sinfonietta, violin concerto, cello
concerto, orchestral works, at least four string quartets, quintets for strings and for piano with clarinet and other pieces. His musical style is of its time, an amalgam
of late Romanticism and early Modernism, comparable to those of his contemporaries
Richard Strauss, Mahler, Franz Schreker and
Alexander Zemlinsky. His idiom left some marks on Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose precocious Sinfonietta is dedicated to Weingartner, who
conducted its first performance. His Third Symphony was intended both as a message of love to Lucille Marcel and a reply to the
many critical attacks on him in Vienna; the finale climaxes in a parady of the waltz from Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus. Weingartner edited the complete works of Berlioz (he once called Berlioz the "creator of the modern orchestra") as well as the opera Joseph
by Méhul, Oberon by Weber, and
individual works of Christoph Gluck, Richard
Wagner and others. He also made an orchestral version of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata. 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.
Writings and interests
Weingartner was early interested in the occult, astrology, and Eastern mysticism, which influenced his personal philosophy and his music to some extent. He was himself a prolific
writer who published a poetical drama, Golgotha in 1908. He wrote copiously on music drama, on conducting, on the symphony
since Beethoven, on the symphonies of Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann as well as on art and esoteric subjects. Two
collections of essays were Musikalische Walpurgisnacht (1907) and Akkorde (1912). He also published an
autobiography, Lebenserinnerungen in 1923.
Works
Symphonies
- Symphony No. 1 in G, op. 23 (1898)
- Symphony No. 2 in E-flat, op. 29
- Symphony No. 3 in E, op. 49 with organ (1908-10)
- 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?)
Other Orchestral Works
- Serenade for string orchestra, op. 6
- König Lear, symphonic poem after Shakespeare, op. 20 (1895)
- Das Gefilde der Seligen (The Elysian Fields), symphonic poem after the painting by Arnold Böcklin, op. 21 (1897)
- Violin Concerto in G major, op. 52
- Lustige Ouvertüre, op. 53
- Aus erster Zeit, overture, op. 56
- Music to Goethe's Faust (1908)
- Cello Concerto in A minor, op. 60
- Music to The Tempest of Shakespeare, op. 61
Choral Music
- Traumnacht und Sturmmythus for chorus and orchestra, op. 38
- Die Auferstehung, op. 69 (after the ode by Klopstock)
Chamber Works
- String Quartet No.1, op. 24
- String Quartet No. 2, op. 26
- Sextet in E minor for piano and string quintet, op. 33
- Quintet for 2 violins, 2 oboes and cello, op. 40
- Quintet for clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano, op. 50
- Octet in G major for clarinet, horn bassoon, string quartet and piano, op. 73
Operas
- Sakuntala, op. 9, 1884
- Malakiwa, op. 10, 1886
- Genesius, op. 14, 1892
- Trilogy Orestes, op. 30, 1902 (after Aeschylus)
- Spring Fairy-Play (Weimar, 1908)
- 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
- Terakoya (Die Dorfschule), op. 64, 1920
- Meister Andrea, op. 66, 1920
- Der Apostat, op. 72 (unpublished; libretto by Weingartner, about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate)
References
Bibliography
- Dyment, Christopher; Dyment, Christopher (1976).
Felix Weingartner: Recollections & Recordings. Rickmansworth, England: Triad press. ISBN
0902070177.
- Holden, Raymond (2005). The Virtuoso Conductors:
The Central European Tradition from Wagner to Karajan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN
0300093268.
- Weingartner, Felix (2004). On the Performance
of Beethoven's Symphonies and Other Essays. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. ISBN 0486439666.
- Weingartner, Felix; Arthur Bles [1907] (1971).
The Symphony Writers Since Beethoven. London: William Reeves. ISBN 0837143691.
- Weingartner, Felix; Wolff, Marguerite (1937).
Buffets and Rewards: A Musician's Reminiscences. London: Hutchinson & Co. OCLC 3288646.
External links
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