Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch (12 March 1888 – 25 October 1965) was a German conductor, best known for his performances of the music of Wagner, Bruckner and Richard Strauss.
Knappertsbusch followed the traditional route for an aspiring conductor in Germany in the early 20th century, starting as a musical assistant and progressing to increasingly senior conducting posts. In 1922, at the age of 34, he was appointed general music director of the
Studio recording did not suit Knappertsbusch, whose best-known recordings were made live during performances at Bayreuth. He died at the age of 77, following a bad fall the previous year.
Life and career
Early years
Knappertsbusch was born in
He conducted at the Mülheim-Ruhr theatre from 1910 to 1912; more significant, according to
Elberfeld, Leipzig, Dessau and Munich
Knappertsbusch began his career with a conducting post in Elberfeld. During the
When Bruno Walter left Munich for New York in 1922, Knappertsbusch succeeded him as general music director of the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Bavarian State Opera.[2] In 1925 Knappertsbusch and his wife divorced. The following year he married Marion von Leipzig (1888–1984); this marriage, which was childless, lasted for the rest of his life.[1]
Knappertsbusch remained in Munich for eleven years. He invited guest conductors such as Richard Strauss and Sir Thomas Beecham,[3] and won high praise for his own conducting. After a 1931 Parsifal, one reviewer wrote, "Few conductors have the courage to take this opera slowly enough. Professor Knappertsbusch, however, gave a thoroughly well-balanced interpretation … full of life, full of philosophy and full of charm". The same reviewer observed that Knappertsbusch's experience at Bayreuth before the war had given him an advantage over rival conductors such as Arturo Toscanini and Wilhelm Furtwängler.[4] He was musically conservative, but conducted the premieres of seven operas during his time at Munich: Don Gil von den grünen Hosen by Walter Braunfels, Das Himmelskleid by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Samuel Pepys by Albert Coates, Die geliebte Stimme by Jaromír Weinberger, Lucedia by Vittorio Giannini, and Das Herz by Hans Pfitzner.[1] A visiting English conductor, Adrian Boult, found Knappertsbusch's performances of Mozart lacking in rhythmic precision, but praised his conducting of Wagner, remarking that even Arthur Nikisch could not have produced a more overwhelming performance of Tristan und Isolde.[5]
1936 to 1945
In 1936 the Nazis, who had been in power in Germany since 1933, revoked Knappertsbusch's lifetime contract at the State Opera. There were evidently several reasons for this: he refused to join the Nazi Party and was frequently rude about the régime;[n 1] budgetary constraints meant little to him; and Adolf Hitler, who had strong ideas about music, did not like his slow tempi, calling him "that military bandleader".[7]
During the next nine years, Knappertsbusch worked mostly in Austria conducting at the
Post-war
After the war there was a widespread desire in Munich for Knappertsbusch's return, but like the other leading musicians who had worked under the Nazi régime he was subject to a process of denazification, and the occupying American forces appointed Georg Solti as general music director of the State Opera. Solti, a young Jewish musician who had been in exile in Switzerland during the war, later recalled:
After this Knappertsbusch mostly freelanced.
In 1964 Knappertsbusch had a bad fall, from which he never fully recovered.[17] He died on 25 October the following year at the age of 77,[2] and was buried in the Bogenhausen cemetery in Munich.[1] He was greatly mourned by his colleagues. In 1967, the record producer John Culshaw wrote:
Reputation and legacy
Knappertsbusch, known familiarly as "Kna", was described as a ruppiger Humanist ("rough humanist"). He was capable of ferocious tirades in rehearsal – usually at singers: he got on much better with orchestras.[1] Culshaw wrote of him:
Recordings
Knappertsbusch did not take the gramophone as seriously as some of his colleagues did. Although he was praised for such recordings as his 1931 Munich version of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony ("a monument of unfaltering fire", according to one reviewer),[19] he was not at home in the recording studio. Culshaw wrote:
For
Some of Knappertsbusch's best-received recordings were made during live performances at Bayreuth in the 1950s and 1960s. A Parsifal from 1951 was issued by Decca, and a 1962 performance was recorded by Philips. Both have remained in the catalogues, and when the 1962 set was transferred to CD, Alan Blyth wrote in Gramophone, "this is the most moving and satisfying account of Parsifal ever recorded, and one that for various reasons will not easily be surpassed. Nobody today … can match Knappertsbusch's combination of line and emotional power".[23] In 1951 the Decca team also recorded The Ring conducted by Knappertsbusch, but for contractual reasons it could not be published at the time.[24][n 3]
Notes, references and sources
Notes
- ^ In a 1996 study Michael Kater plays down this factor, suggesting that Knappertsbusch's ideological hostilty to the Nazis was not particularly strong, and ascribing his dismissal more to Nazi complaints about his administration of the opera and to Adolf Hitler's dislike.[6]
- ^ Knappertsbusch conducted Tannhäuser in Budapest (1937) and Salome in London (1937).[10]
- ^ Götterdämmerung from that 1951 cycle was published in 1999.[25]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Hans Knappertsbusch", Radio Swiss Classic. (In German). Retrieved 29 May 2020
- ^ a b c d e Crichton, Ronald and José A. Bowen. "Knappertsbusch, Hans", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. Retrieved 29 May 2020 (subscription required)
- ^ "Munich Festival", The Times, 18 July 1933, p. 12
- ^ "Wagner Festival at Munich", The Times, 3 August 1931, p. 8
- ^ Boult, Adrian. "Musical Festivals", The Times, 15 September 1928, p. 8
- ^ Kater, pp. 43–46
- ^ Kater, p. 45
- ^ "Salzburg Festival", The Times, 25 January 1937, p. 10
- ^ "Tannhaüser" from Budapest", The Times, 16 February 1937
- ^ "Covent Garden", The Times, 12 January 1937, p. 10; and "Tannhäuser from Budapest", The Times, 16 February 1937, p. 10
- ^ Monod, p. 62
- ^ Strasser, Otto, quoted in Culshaw, p. 156
- ^ Quoted in Culshaw, p. 226
- ^ Culshaw, pp. 26–27
- ^ Culshaw, p. 50
- ^ Patmore, David. "Hans Knappertsbusch", Naxos Records. Retrieved 29 May 2020
- ^ a b Culshaw, p. 225
- ^ Culshaw, p. 67
- ^ "The Musician's Gramophone", The Times, 26 May 1931, p. 10
- ^ Culshaw, pp. 66–67
- ^ Stuart, Philip. Decca Classical 1929–2009. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
- OCLC 874139648
- ^ Blyth, Alan. "Wagner – Parsifal", Gramophone, June 1986
- ^ Culshaw, pp. 30–31
- OCLC 841929296
Sources
- ISBN 978-0-436-11800-5.
- ISBN 978-0-19-513242-7.
- Monod, David (2016). Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans 1945–1953. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-3404-3.