Bruno Walter (September 15, 1876 – February 17, 1962) was a German-born conductor and composer. One of the most famous conductors of the 20th century, he was born in Berlin, but moved to several countries between 1933 and 1939, finally settling in the United States in 1939. He was born Bruno Schlesinger, but began using Walter as his surname in 1896, and officially changed his surname to Walter upon becoming naturalised in Austria in 1911.
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Born near Alexanderplatz in Berlin to a middle-class Jewish family, Bruno Schlesinger began his musical education at the Stern Conservatory at the age of eight, making his first public appearance as a pianist when he was nine. However, following visits to one of Hans von Bülow's concerts in 1889 and to Bayreuth in 1891, he changed his mind and decided upon a conducting career. He made his conducting début at the Cologne Opera with Albert Lortzing's Der Waffenschmied in 1894. Later that year he left for the Hamburg Opera to work as a chorus director. There he first met and worked with Gustav Mahler, whom he idolized and with whose music he later became strongly identified.
In 1896 Schlesinger took a conducting position at the opera house in Breslau – a job found for him by Mahler. The conductor recorded that the director of this theater, Theodor Loewe, required that before taking up this position he change his name of Schlesinger, which literally means Silesian, "because of its frequent occurrence in the capital of Silesia",[1] although other sources attribute the change to a desire to make his name sound less Jewish.[2] (Note: It is often stated that Walter was his middle name and he merely dropped the surname Schlesinger. This is not true; he had no middle name and "Walter" had never been one of his names.) In 1897, he took an opera-conducting position at Pressburg, and in 1898 he took one in Riga, Latvia. Then Walter returned in 1900 to Berlin, where he assumed the post of Royal Prussian Conductor at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, succeeding Franz Schalk; his colleagues there included Richard Strauss and Karl Muck. While in Berlin he also conducted the premiere of Der arme Heinrich by Hans Pfitzner, who became a lifelong friend.
In 1901 Walter accepted Mahler's invitation to be his assistant at the Court Opera in Vienna. Walter led Verdi's Aida at his debut. In the following years Walter's conducting reputation soared as he was invited to conduct across Europe – in Prague, in London where in 1910 he conducted Tristan und Isolde and Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers at Covent Garden, and in Rome. A few months after Mahler's death in 1911, Walter led the first performance of Das Lied von der Erde in Munich, as well as Mahler's Symphony No. 9 in Vienna the next year.
Although Walter became an Austrian citizen in 1911, he left Vienna to become the Royal Bavarian Music Director in Munich in 1913. In January of the following year Walter conducted his first concert in Moscow. During the First World War he remained actively involved in conducting, giving premieres to Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates as well as Pfitzner's Palestrina.
In Munich Walter was good friends with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII).[3])
Walter ended his Munich appointment in 1922 and left for New York in 1923, working with the New York Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall; he later conducted in Detroit, Minnesota and Boston.
Back in Europe Walter was re-engaged for several appointments, including Berlin in 1925 as musical director at the Städtische Opera, Charlottenburg, and in Leipzig in 1929. He made his debut at La Scala in 1926. In London, Walter was chief conductor of the German seasons at Covent Garden from 1924 to 1931.
In his speeches in the late 1920s, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler complained bitterly about the presence of Jewish conductors at the Berlin opera, and mentioned Walter a number of times, adding to Walter's name the phrase, "alias Schlesinger." [4] In 1933, when the Nazis took power, they undertook a systematic process of barring Jews from artistic life. Walter left for Austria, which became his main center of activity for the next several years, although he was also a frequent guest conductor of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1934 to 1939, and made guest appearances such as in annual concerts with the New York Philharmonic from 1932 to 1936. At the time of the Anschluss in 1938, Walter was at a recording session in Paris; France offered Walter citizenship, which he accepted. (His daughter was in Vienna at the time, and was arrested by the Nazis; Walter was able to use his influence to free her. He also used his influence to find safe quarters for his brother and sister in Scandinavia during the war.)
On November 1, 1939, he set sail for the United States, which became his permanent home. He settled in Beverly Hills, California, where his many expatriate neighbors included the German writer Thomas Mann.
While Walter had many influences within music, in his Of Music and Making (1957) he notes a profound influence from the philosopher Rudolf Steiner. He notes, "In old age I have had the good fortune to be initiated into the world of anthroposophy and during the past few years to make a profound study of the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. Here we see alive and in operation that deliverance of which Hoelderlin speaks; its blessing has flowed over me, and so this book is the confession of belief in anthroposophy. There is no part of I my inward life that has not had new light shed upon it, or been stimulated, by the lofty teachings of Rudolf Steiner ... I am profoundly grateful for having been so boundlessly enriched ... It is glorious to become a learner again at my time of life. I have a sense of the rejuvenation of my whole being which gives strength and renewal to my musicianship, even to my music-making."
During his years in the United States, Walter worked with many famous American orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic (where he was musical adviser from 1947 to 1949, but declined an offer to be music director), and the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1946 onwards, he made numerous trips back to Europe, becoming an important musical figure in the early years of the Edinburgh Festival and in Salzburg, Vienna and Munich. His late life was marked by stereo recordings with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. He made his last live concert appearance on December 4, 1960 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and pianist Van Cliburn. His last recording was a series of Mozart overtures with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra at the end of March in 1961. Although raised a Jew, near the end of his life Walter converted to Catholicism.[5]
Bruno Walter died of a heart attack in his Beverly Hills home in 1962.
Walter's work was documented on hundreds of recordings made between 1900 (when he was 24) and 1961. Most listeners became familiar with him through the stereo recordings made in his last few years, when his health was declining. But many critics agree that these recordings do not fully convey what Walter's art must have sounded like in its prime. For one thing, the late recordings sometimes have a geniality that contrasts with the more mercurial, intense, and energetic performances Walter recorded in earlier decades. For another, the late recordings focus mostly on music from Mozart through Mahler, but in Walter's youth he often conducted what was then newer music (including Mahler).
Walter worked closely with Mahler as an assistant and protege. Mahler did not live to perform his Das Lied von der Erde or Symphony No. 9, but his widow, Alma Mahler, asked Walter to premiere both. Walter led the first performance of Das Lied in 1911 in Munich and of the Ninth in 1912 in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic. Decades later, Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic (with Mahler's brother-in-law Arnold Rose still the concertmaster) made the first recordings of Das Lied von der Erde in 1936 and of the Ninth Symphony in 1938. Both were recorded live in concert, the latter only two months before the Nazi Anschluss drove Walter (and Rose) into exile.
These recordings are of special interest for the performance practices of the orchestra and also for intensity of expression. Walter was to re-record both works successfully in later decades. His famous Decca Das Lied von der Erde with Kathleen Ferrier, Julius Patzak, and the Vienna Philharmonic was made in May, 1952, and he recorded it again in studio with the New York Philharmonic in 1960. He conducted the New York Philharmonic in the 1957 stereo recording of the second symphony. He recorded the Ninth in stereo in 1961. These recordings, as well as his other American recordings, were released initially by Columbia Records and later on CD by Sony.
Since Mahler himself never conducted the Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde, Walter's performances cannot be taken as documentations of Mahler's interpretations. But in the light of Walter's personal connection with the composer, and his having given the original performances, they have another kind of primary authenticity. In his other (greatly esteemed) recordings of Mahler – various songs and the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth symphonies – there is the great added interest that he had heard Mahler's own performances of most of them.
Walter made many highly acclaimed recordings of other great Germanic composers, such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss Jr., and Anton Bruckner, as well as of Bach, Wagner, Schumann, Dvorak, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, and others. Walter was a leading conductor of opera, particularly known for his Mozart, and recordings of some from the Metropolitan Opera and the Salzburg Festival are now available on CD. So are performances of Wagner, Verdi, and Beethoven's Fidelio. Also of great interest are recordings from the 1950s of his rehearsals of Mozart, Mahler, and Brahms, which give insight into his musical priorities and into the warm and non-tyrannical manner (as contrasted with some of his colleagues) with which he related to orchestras.
Walter only composed in his early years. Later he decided to be "not a composer." His compositions include:
Source: Grove Music Online
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[[File:|210px|thumb|The young Bruno Walter]] Bruno Walter (pronounce: "Valter"), (born Berlin, 15 September 1876; died Beverley Hills, California, 17 February 1962) was a German-born conductor, pianist and composer. He was one of the greatest conductors of his time. He grew up in Germany, but later became an Austrian and, when the Nazis came to power, he moved to several other countries, finally settling in the United States where he became an American citizen. His name was originally Bruno Schlesinger but from 1896 he was usually known as Bruno Walter. Walter became his official surname in 1911 when he became an Austrian citizen.
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[[File:|210px|thumb|left|Bruno Walter]]
Bruno was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. He had his early musical education at the Stern Conservatory when he was eight, and played the piano in public when he was nine. He went to concerts which were conducted by the great Hans von Bülow. Two years later, in 1891, he heard Wagner operas in Bayreuth. These experiences made him want to be a conductor.
Bruno started his conducting career at the Cologne Opera in 1894. Later that year he went to the Hamburg Opera to work as a chorus director. There he met and worked with Gustav Mahler, from whom he learned a lot. Mahler found him a job conducting at the opera house in Breslau. This is when he changed his name from Schlesinger (meaning: “someone from Silesia”) to “Walter”. He then went to Riga, returning to Berlin in 1900 where he conducted at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden where he worked with famous people such as Richard Strauss and Karl Muck.
In 1901 Mahler invited Walter to be his assistant at the Court Opera in Vienna. At his first performance he conducted Verdi's Aida. He was becoming very famous all over Europe. He performed in Prague and in London where in 1910 he conducted Tristan und Isolde and Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers at Covent Garden. A few months after Mahler's death in 1911, Walter led the first performance of Das Lied von der Erde in Munich, as well as Mahler's Symphony No. 9 in Vienna the next year.
Walter became an Austrian citizen in 1911, but two years later he went to Germany to become the Royal Bavarian Music Director in Munich. The next year Walter conducted his first concert in Moscow. He continued to conduct during First World War, conducting operas by composers including Erich Korngold and Hans Pfitzner. Among his friends in Munich was Eugenio Pacelli who later became Pope Pius XII.
Walter left Munich in 1922 and went to New York the next year. He conducted the New York Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. He later conducted in Detroit, Minnesota and Boston.
When he returned to Europe, Walter was invited to play in many places, including Berlin Leipzig, Milan (La Scala) and London, where he was chief conductor of the German seasons at Covent Garden from 1924 to 1931.
In the late 1920s, the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler often complained that conductors at the Berlin opera were Jews. He often talked about Walter, adding that his real name was “Schlesinger”. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 Walter left Austria. He often conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra and was invited to conduct concerts in New York with the New York Philharmonic. When the Nazi’s took power in Austria (the Anschluss) Walter was conducting in Paris. France offered Walter French citizenship. His daughter was in Vienna. She was arrested by the Nazis, but Walter managed to persuade them to free her.
On 1 November, 1939, he sailed to the United States where he lived for the rest of his life. His home was in Beverly Hills, California. Many people who lived there had fled from Europe because of the Nazis. They became his friends. They included the German writer Thomas Mann. He worked with many famous American orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. After the war he often came back to Europe. He performed at the Edinburgh Festival and in Salzburg, Vienna and Munich. In his later life he made many stereo recordings with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. He made his last live concert appearance on 4 December, 1960 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and pianist Van Cliburn. His last recording was a series of Mozart overtures with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra at the end of March in 1961. Bruno Walter died of a heart attack in his Beverly Hills home in 1962.
Between 1923 and 1961 Walter made hundreds of recordings. The earlier recordings, made at a time when his conducting was at its best, are often rather poor recordings. When he made his last recordings, after stereo records had been invented, he was already quite ill. In his early years he gave some of the first performances of Mahler’s music. He conducted the first performance of Das Lied von der Erde with the Vienna Philharmonic. In 1936 he made the first recording of the same work with the same orchestra which still had the same leader: Arnold Rosé who was Mahler’s brother-in-law. This recording was made just before the Nazi Anschluss which forced Walter and Rosé into exile. Many years later, in 1952, Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic once again made a famous recording of Das Lied von der Erde with the singers Kathleen Ferrier and Julius Patzak. He also recorded Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Since Walter had worked closely with Mahler, and Mahler had never conducted either of these two great works of his, we can imagine that Walter’s recordings show us how Mahler might have wanted the music to be played. Walter made many recordings of other great Germanic composers, such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss II., and Anton Bruckner.
Walter was known as a kind, modest man, quite unlike some other conductors of the time who behaved like dictators. He was an excellent pianist and sometimes accompanied singers such as Kathleen Ferrier at recitals. He also composed several works. He wrote an autobiography called “Theme and Variations”.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie; 1980, vol 20, pp187-188; ISBN 1-56159-174-2.
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   | Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere - Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere - smh.com.au |
| | Biography - SONY MASTERWORKS - Home |
| | Bruno Walters Heritage at Vienna Music University - Der Bruno Walter Nachlass an der Musikuniversität Wien |
| | The Bruno Walter Foundation - Bruno Walter Memorial Foundation |
| | Music Division - NYPL, Library for the Performing Arts Music Division |
| | The New York Public Library for the Peforming Arts - NYPL, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts |
| | Wagner: "Im Treibhaus" (Walter on piano accompanying Flagstad) - Sign in to Yahoo! |
| | The Bruno Walter Papers in the New York Public Library - Walter (Bruno) Papers, [ca. 1887-1966] |
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