Felix Weingartner
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Felix Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg (June 2 1863 – May 7 1942) was a conductor, composer and pianist.
Weingartner was born in the Dalmatian city of Zara (today Zadar) to Austrian parents, and the family moved to Graz in 1868.
He was among Franz Liszt's later pupils, and Liszt helped produce Weingartner's opera Sakuntala, though the Weimar orchestra of the 1880s, according to Liszt biographer Alan Walker, was far from its peak of a few decades earlier — and the opera performance ended with orchestra going one way and chorus another. *
From 1908 till 1927 he was the principal conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the finest in the world and the most prominent in Austria.
Besides several other operas Weingartner wrote seven symphonies (being 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 (as with Franz Schmidt) and other pieces. His musical style partakes somewhat more of early Romanticism than of its later developments, to say nothing of modernism. As a conductor Weingartner recorded perhaps the first complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies on record; he also wrote books on conducting, on Beethoven's symphonies and on the symphony since Beethoven, and editions of individual works of Gluck, Wagner and others, and a large edition of Berlioz. 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. Second movement orchestrates, is based on sketches apparently meant for the dance/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.
Further reading
- Raymond Holden, The Virtuoso Conductors: The Central European Tradition from Wagner to Karajan. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2005. ISBN 0300093268.
- Felix Weingartner, On the Performance of Beethoven's Symphonies and Other Essays. New York: Dover Publications reprint, 2004. ISBN 0486439666.
- Felix Weingartner, The Symphony Writers Since Beethoven. Translated from the German by Arthur Bles, and with a notice of the author's own 5th symphony added by D. C. Parker. London: William Reeves (1971?). ISBN 0837143691.
- Felix Weingartner, Buffets and Rewards: A Musician's Reminiscences. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1937.
- Christopher Dyment, Felix Weingartner: Recollections & Recordings. Triad press 1976. Edited excerpts from this book (including the infamous Bayreuth treatise in english) is available at http://www.geocities.com/perofoslo/Weingartner/index.html
Notes
- Note regarding personal names: Edler is a rank of nobility, not a first or middle name. The female form is Edle.
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