Bruno Walter
(Berlin, 1876-Beverly Hills, 1962) German conductor and composer, nationalized American.Bruno Walter studied music at the Stern Conservatory in his hometown with the intention of undertaking a career as a pianist, an instrument with which he debuted as a soloist at the age of thirteen playing the Piano Concerto in E flat de Moscheles with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.But it was when listening to Hans von Bulow conduct that he decided to focus on conducting.In 1894, at the age of eighteen, he made his debut with the opera Der Waffenschmied by Gustav Lortzing leading the orchestra at the Cologne Opera.
Bruno Walter
Until 1896 he remained in the orchestra as a trainee conductor, and that same year he moved to Hamburg, where he received lessons from Gustav Mahler.His relationship with Mahler was decisive for his professional career, because of the teachings he received from Mahler and because it was the Austrian composer who provided him with a job as a conductor in Breslau.Upon occupying this position, Walter adopted what would be his stage name from that moment on.
In 1887 he conducted in Pressburg and the following year in Riga.In the Latvian capital he met his future wife, the soprano Elsa Kornek.The arrival of the new century led him to direct in Berlin and later, in 1901, in Vienna.There he was assistant to his teacher Mahler and director of the Vienna Opera (Hofoper), where he remained until 1912.Walter combined his position in Vienna with numerous concerts in Czechoslovakia, Italy, Germany and Great Britain.In the latter country he had great success directing Tristan and Isolde at London's Covent Garden.
After Mahler's death, Walter was commissioned to premiere two of his works: The Song of the Earth in 1911 and the Ninth Symphony at next year.In 1913 he settled in Munich, where he remained for a decade when he was appointed General Director of Music for Bavaria, replacing Félix Mottl.His Berlin stage served to give him international prestige, especially for his performances of operas by Mozart and Wagner.He combined this position with that of guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, at the head of which he premiered works by contemporary composers such as the British Ethel Smyth.
In 1923 he returned to Vienna, already with Austrian nationality that It had been provided to him in 1911.That same year he traveled to New York for the first time, where he made his debut with the New York Symphony Orchestra.From that moment and for several years he was traveling to the United States to perform concert tours in Minneapolis, Cleveland, Los Angeles and New York.
In 1925 he settled again in Berlin after being appointed general director of music at the State Opera of that city, and in the summer of that same year he attended the Salzburg Festival for the first time, where he obtained a great success with his renditions of Mozart.He combined these activities with conducting the German opera repertoire at London's Covent Garden between 1924 and 1931, and with some concerts leading the London Symphony Orchestra.
Sergei Rachmaninov and Bruno Walter
In 1926, during a visit to Leningrad, he met the then young Dmitri Shostakovich and showed great interest in his Symphony No.1 , to the point of releasing it later in Berlin That same year, Walter began working for the newly opened Charlottenburg Opera House (Berlin), and thanks to his presence and that of other leading directors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, the theater gained international renown.
In 1929, after some friction with the theater's management, Walter decided to resign and go to Leipzig, where he led the Gewandhaus theater orchestra.Due to the rise and rise to power of Nazism, he soon had to leave this position, which was then held by Richard Strauss.Walter continued his career in London and Vienna.In 1935 he obtained the position of principal conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Austrian capital, but the German occupation forced him to flee that country in the direction of France.
Despite the fact that the French government granted him French nationality in 1940, Walter's final destination was United States, where he remained until the date of his death.In 1946 he became a US citizen and in that country he replaced Klemperer at the head of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, in addition to getting on the podium of other groups such as the New York Philharmonic, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra or the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.His debut at the New York Metropolitan took place in 1941 with Fidelio , by Beethoven, an opera that he also conducted at the Vienna Staatsoper at the end of World War II.In 1947 he participated in the first edition of the Edinburgh Festival directing in The Song of the Earth by Mahler the great lyric star Kathleen Ferrier.The 1950s took him to Salzburg and Vienna.In the latter city he conducted Mahler's Symphony No.4 in 1960 on the occasion of the composer's centenary.The last two years of his life were spent at his residence in Los Angeles, where he died in 1962.
As a composer he premiered two symphonies and some chamber music, but he soon abandoned musical creation to dedicate himself fully to music.conducting orchestras.His performances were characterized by their lyricism and warmth.The technique took a second place since, in the words of Walter himself, "concentrating on technique one does not arrive at precision".His favorite repertoire was that of the Central European music masters, whose music he approached with great respect.
As with many other musicians of his time, his interpretations of classical music did not take into account historicist criteria too much, since Walter used large orchestras for the repertoire of the 18th century.His way of conducting was very different from that of other masters of the baton such as Arturo Toscanini or Wilhelm Furtwängler, since he did not have the fieryness of the first or the facility for improvisation of the second.Bruno Walter always tried to achieve fluid communication with his musicians, avoiding at all times the dictatorial gestures that characterized other conductors.
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