Ferenc Fricsay
Ferenc Fricsay | |
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Website | http://www.ferenc-fricsay.net/faminde.html |
Ferenc Fricsay (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈfɛrɛnt͡s ˈfrit͡ʃɒi]; 9 August 1914 – 20 February 1963) was a Hungarian conductor. From 1960 until his death, he was an Austrian citizen.
Biography
Fricsay was born in Budapest in 1914 and studied music under
On graduating in 1933, Fricsay became
In 1945, secret emissaries offered him the co-directorship of the Metropolitan Orchestra of Budapest (later
Fricsay gave his last concert on 7 December 1961 in London, conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the UK premiere of Zoltán Kodály's Symphony, Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (with Wolfgang Schneiderhan), and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.[4]
He suffered from repeated illnesses throughout his life and finally succumbed to cancer of the stomach on 20 February 1963 at the age of 48 in Basel, Switzerland.
Fricsay found his final resting place at the cemetery of Ermatingen in the Swiss canton of Thurgau, where the family settled in 1952. His mother Berta, née Lengyel (1876-1963), died less than a month after Fricsay and was buried in the same grave. His grandson Dominic-Ferenc Dobay (1972-1992), his first wife Martha Fricsay-Telbisz (1915-1997) and Herta Stein (1912-2005) were buried in the same site as well. In 2015, the grave was declared by the municipality as a memorial which is protected from dissolution.[5]
Repertoire and recordings
Fricsay was known for his interpretations of the music of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as that of his teachers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. According to the entry in "New Grove", he conducted without a baton, but "confounded the adverse critics of this technique by the extreme clarity and precision of his performances," to which "New Grove" ascribes "a dynamic spirit" and "vividness of character in familiar classics."
From the 1950s until his death, he recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. He led the inauguration of the rebuilt Deutsche Oper Berlin with a performance of Don Giovanni on 24 September 1961.[3]
Notes
- ^ The true reason involved US tax policy. He discovered that under the Internal Revenue Code he would have to declare income earned throughout the world in his US tax return as long as he spent more than 6 months residing in the United States. His contract with the Houston Symphony would have resulted in having his income becoming subject to prohibitive US tax rates. When he became aware of this problem he abruptly left Houston for Switzerland.
References
- ^ a b "Dirigent Ferenc Fricsay". Fricsay.net. Retrieved 2012-01-21.
- ^ a b "Ferenc Fricsay". Multilingualarchive.com. Retrieved 2012-01-21.[permanent dead link]
- ^ a b Noël Goodwin (1980). "Ferenc Fricsay". New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, v. 6. Macmillan. p. 844.
- ^ "London Philharmonic Society", The Times, 2 December 1961, p. 2
- ^ Schmalz, Sarah (2015-04-04). "Das Vogelnestli des Stardirigenten". St. Galler Tagblatt (in German). Retrieved 2024-02-26.