Weingartner, Felix

Weingartner, Felix – Zwei Gesänge von Gottfried Keller für eine tiefere Singstimme mit Begleitung des Orchesters Op. 35 & Vier Gesänge für eine höhere Singstimme mit Begleitung des Orchesters Op. 36 (orchestral songs)

The Conductor
Felix Weingartner was a Dalmatian conductor and composer renowned for his strong intellect and absolute command over the orchestras he led. As one of Franz Liszt’s last pupils at Weimar, he considered himself primarily a composer, heard his own operas produced, and featured his own compositions in concerts he conducted. After leading central European opera companies in Weimar, Königsberg, and Danzig, Weingartner succeeded Gustav Mahler as the Director of the Vienna Hofoper (1907-1910). He led the Vienna Philharmonic from 1908-1927 and was the first to devote an entire concert to the music of Johann Strauss, Jr. (for the composer’s centennial on 25 October 1925). He was the first to conduct commercial recordings of all of Beethoven’s symphonies.

Weingartner was interested in poetry, Eastern mysticism, and the occult. He wrote copiously on musical topics and edited many works by Berlioz, Wagner, and Gluck. He decried “tempo rubato conductors” (like Mahler!), preferring a cleaner, more historically sensitive approach to pre-Romantic music. He was careful to add detailed expressive markings in his seven symphonies, symphonic poems (King Lear), chamber music, and Lieder. Due to these efforts, he was considered a reformer – and a reactionary – who excelled in Schubertian melody but supported his themes with a combination of late romantic and early modern harmonies; his music is contemporaneous with that of Richard Strauss, Franz Schreker, and Alexander Zemlinsky. The precocious Viennese (soon to be American) composer Erich Wolfgang von Korngold dedicated his early Sinfonietta to Weingartner, who conducted its premiere. He also conducted English orchestras, led the New York Philharmonic Society on tour in 1906, and conducted in Boston (1912-1913).
He was a prolific composer, with eight operas, six symphonies, two concertos, chamber music and songs, receiving attention due to his own performances of them. His music was informed by deep experience with the larger works of Liszt and Berlioz: together with Charles Malherbe, he edited Berlioz’s complete works and was one of the first to bring that composer’s works back into public favor. He made influential recordings of his own orchestral arrangements of Carl Maria von Weber’s Invitation to the Dance and Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” piano sonata, Op. 106. … (by LAURA STANFIELD PRICHARD & CHLOE ZHONG)

There are 2 prefaces online:

1. ENGLISH PREFACE BY LAURA STANFIELD PRICHARD & CHLOE ZHONG (2024) – about Op.36

2. ENGLISH & GERMAN PREFACE BY JUERGEN THYM (2014) – about Op. 35 & Op. 36

Read full prefaces  > HERE