Felix Weingartner

Felix Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg (June 2 1863 – May 7 1942) was a conductor, composer and pianist.

Related Topics:
June 2 - 1863 - May 7 - 1942 - Conductor - Composer - Pianist

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Weingartner was born in the Dalmatian city of Zara (today Zadar) to Austrian parents, and the family moved to Graz in 1868.

Related Topics:
Dalmatia - Zadar - Austrian - Graz - 1868

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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. *

Related Topics:
Franz Liszt - Weimar - Alan Walker

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Besides several other operas Weingartner wrote seven symphonies (being recorded by CPO), 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.

Related Topics:
Symphonies - Violin - Cello - String quartet - Quintet - Franz Schmidt - Romanticism - Gluck - Wagner - Berlioz - Brian Newbould - Paul Sacher - Georg Tintner - Josef Krips

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* Walker sources this to Weingartner's autobiography, published in Zürich and Leipzig in 1928–9.

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