Arthur Nikisch

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Arthur Nikisch (or Nikitsch) (October 12, 1855 – January 23, 1922) was a Hungarian conductor who performed mainly in Germany. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of Bruckner and Tchaikovsky.

Nikisch was born in Lébényi Szentmiklós, Hungary to a Hungarian father and a mother from Moravia. Nikisch studied at the Vienna Conservatory, where he won prizes for composition and performance on violin and piano. However, he was to achieve most of his fame as a conductor. In 1877 he moved to Leipzig and became principal conductor of the Leipzig Opera in 1879. He gave the premiere of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony in 1884.

Later he became conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and then in 1895 he succeeded Carl Reinecke as director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In the same year he became principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and held both positions until his death.

He was a pioneer in several ways. In 1912 he took the London Symphony Orchestra to the United States, a first for a European orchestra. In 1913, he made the first commercial recording of a complete symphony, Beethoven's 5th, with the Berlin Philharmonic.

He died in Leipzig in 1922, and was buried there. Immediately after his death, the square where he had lived was renamed Nikischplatz, and in 1971 the city created the Arthur Nikisch prize for young conductors.

His legacy is as one of the founders of modern conducting, with deep analysis of the score, a simple beat, and a charisma that let him bring out the full sonority of the orchestra and plumb the depths of the music. Nikisch's conducting style was greatly admired by Leopold Stokowski, Arturo Toscanini, Sir Adrian Boult, and Fritz Reiner, among others. Reiner said, "It was [Nikisch] who told me that I should never wave my arms in conducting, and that I should use my eyes to give cues."^{[#endnote_hart16]}

Notes

Hart, Philip. Fritz Reiner: A Biography. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1994. Page 16. ISBN 0-8101-1125-X

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