Karl Böhm
Karl Böhm | |
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Born | |
Died | 14 August 1981 | (aged 86)
Occupation | Conductor |
Karl August Leopold Böhm (28 August 1894 – 14 August 1981) was an Austrian conductor. He was best known for his performances of the music of Mozart, Wagner, and Richard Strauss.
Life and career
Education
Karl Böhm was born in Graz. The son of a lawyer, he studied law and earned a doctorate in this subject before entering the music conservatory in his home town of Graz, Austria.[1] He later enrolled at the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied under Eusebius Mandyczewski, a friend of Johannes Brahms.[1]
Munich, Darmstadt, Hamburg
In 1917, Böhm became a rehearsal assistant in his home town, making his debut as a conductor in Viktor Nessler's Der Trompeter von Säckingen in 1917.[1] He became the assistant director of music in 1919, and the following year, the senior director. On the recommendation of Karl Muck, Bruno Walter engaged him at the Bavarian State Opera, Munich in 1921.[2] An early assignment here was Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, with a cast which included Maria Ivogün, Paul Bender, and Richard Tauber.[3] In 1927 he was appointed as chief musical director in Darmstadt. In 1931 he was appointed to the same post at the Hamburg State Opera, a position he held until 1934.[2]
Vienna, Dresden, Salzburg
External audio | |
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You may hear Karl Böhm conducting Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 with Walter Gieseking and the Saxon State Orchestra in 1939 Here on archive.org |
In 1933, Böhm conducted in Vienna for the first time, in
Böhm first appeared at the Salzburg Festival in 1938,[2] conducting Don Giovanni, and thereafter he became a permanent guest conductor. He secured a top post at the Vienna State Opera in 1943, eventually becoming music director. On the occasion of the 80th birthday of Richard Strauss, on 11 June 1944, he conducted the Vienna State Opera performance of Ariadne auf Naxos.
After World War II
After he had completed a two-year post-war
Success in New York
In 1957, Böhm made his debut with the
Bayreuth and Wagner
Böhm made his debut at the
Indian summer in London
Late in life, he began a guest-conducting relationship with the
Death, family, legacy
Böhm died in Salzburg, at age 86. He conducted the premieres of Strauss's late works Die schweigsame Frau (1935) and Daphne (1938), of which he is the dedicatee, recorded all the major operas (but often made cuts to the scores), and regularly revived Strauss's operas with strong casts during his tenures in Vienna and Dresden, as well as at the Salzburg Festival.
Böhm was praised for his rhythmically robust interpretations of the operas and symphonies of Mozart, and in the 1960s he was entrusted with recording all the Mozart symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic. His brisk, straightforward approach to Wagner won adherents, as did his readings of the symphonies of Brahms, Bruckner, and Schubert. His complete recordings of the Beethoven symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1971 was also highly regarded. On a less common front, he championed and recorded Alban Berg's avant-garde operas Wozzeck and Lulu before they gained a foothold in the standard repertory. Böhm mentioned in the notes to his recordings of these works that he and Berg discussed the orchestrations, leading to changes in the score (as he had similarly done, previously, with Richard Strauss). He was described by one critic as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century.[7] Grove says of him:
Mozart, Wagner and Richard Strauss are the composers with whom his name is most closely associated, followed by Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Brahms and Berg. Böhm’s musical approach, expressed in strictly functional gestures, was direct, fresh, energetic and authoritative, avoiding touches of romantic sentimentality or self-indulgent virtuoso mannerisms ... He was widely admired for his skilful balance and blend of sound, his feeling for a stable tempo and his sense of dramatic tension.[1]
He received two exclusive titles: "Ehrendirigent" of the Vienna Philharmonic and Austrian "Generalmusikdirektor".[1] He was widely fêted on his 80th birthday ten years later; his colleague Herbert von Karajan presented him with a clock to mark that occasion.
Böhm was married to the soprano Thea Linhard.[2] His son Karlheinz Böhm was a successful actor.[8]
Nazi sympathies
Although Böhm never joined the Nazi party, in public and in private he continually expressed strong support for Hitler and his regime. The extent to which this was a matter of conviction rather than careerism is uncertain and the subject of much speculation. Böhm's son maintained that his father was warned that if he defected from Nazi Germany, every member of his family would be sent to a concentration camp,[9] but Böhm's support of the Nazis predated their rise to power.[10] The historian Michael H. Kater records that while Böhm was music director in Dresden (1934–43) he "poured forth rhetoric glorifying the Nazi regime and their cultural aims".[11] Kater ranks Böhm in that group of artists in whom "we also find conflicting elements of resistance, accommodation, and service to the regime, so that in the end they cannot be definitively painted as either Nazis or non-Nazis."[11] Kater also argues that Böhm's move to the Dresden Opera in 1934, where he replaced Fritz Busch after the latter's "politically motivated" dismissal by Nazi authorities, as evidence of Böhm's "extreme careerist opportunism at the expense of personal morality" and was facilitated directly by Hitler, who obtained an early release for Böhm from his previous contract.[11] Kater contrasts this conduct with Böhm's "aesthetically faultless and sometimes politically daring" choice of repertory, and his collaborations with anti-Nazi directors and designers, which "could have been interpreted by enemies of the Nazi regime as a brave attempt to preserve the principle of artistic freedom".[11] In 2015, the Salzburg Festival announced that it would affix a plaque in its Karl Böhm refreshment lobby (Karl-Böhm-Saal) acknowledging the conductor's complicity with Nazi Germany: "Böhm was a beneficiary of the Third Reich and used its system to advance his career. His ascent was facilitated by the expulsion of Jewish and politically out-of-favor colleagues".[n 1]
Honours and awards
Böhm's awards include: 1943:
Notes and references
Notes
References
- ^ a b c d e f Brunner, Gerhard, and José A. Bowen. "Böhm, Karl", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001, retrieved 2 September 2018 (subscription required)
- ^ a b c d e f "Karl Böhm", The Times, 15 August 1981, p. 12
- ^ Karl Böhm, Ich erinnere mich genau, Zurich, 1968.
- ISBN 0-436-11800-9.
- ^ Stephen Everson (25 October 2003). "The lovable dictator". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 September 2007.
- ^ "Karl Böhm", Royal Opera House performance database. Retrieved 2 September 2018
- ^ "Karl Böhm – Biography & History – AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 6 November 2016.
- ^ Emily Langer "Karlheinz Böhm, actor in “Sissi” trilogy and thriller “Peeping Tom,” dies at 86", The Washington Post, 31 May 2014
- ^ Duchen, Jessica. "Salzburg: A festival faces up to its past", The Independent, 2 June 2006
- ISBN 1-55972-108-1.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-509620-7.
- ^ Austrian Broadcasting, "NS-Vergangenheit: Erklärung im Karl-Böhm-Saal", 28 December 2015
- ^ "Reply to a parliamentary question" (PDF) (in German). p. 58. Retrieved 10 December 2012.
- ^ "Reply to a parliamentary question" (PDF) (in German). p. 282. Retrieved 10 December 2012.
- ^ "Gramophone Hall of Fame". www.gramophone.co.uk. Mark Allen Group. Retrieved 24 July 2014.
Further reading
- Böhm, Karl (1992). A Life Remembered: Memoirs. Translated by John Kehoe. London: Marion Boyars, 1992.
- Endler, Franz (1981). Karl Böhm: ein Dirigentenleben. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe. Foreword by ISBN 3455087701.
External links
- Karl Böhm at AllMusic
- Karl Böhm at IMDb
- Rehearsing Don Giovanni