Antonia Brico

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Antonia Brico in 1930

Antonia Louisa Brico (born June 26, 1902 in Rotterdam , † August 3, 1989 in Denver , Colorado ) was an American conductor of Dutch origin.

Life

Brico grew up with foster parents with whom she came to Oakland, California at the age of six. Here she had piano lessons from the age of ten. After graduating from high school, she studied at the University of California at Berkeley from 1919 .

At the same time she became assistant to conductor Paul Steindorff at the San Francisco Opera . After graduating, she took piano lessons with Sigismond Stojowski in New York for two years . In 1926 she went to Hamburg and became a student of Karl Muck - the only one he ever accepted. She also studied at the State Music Academy in Berlin.

In 1930 she made her debut as a conductor with the Berliner Philharmoniker . As a guest conductor, she led the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra . After a concert tour through Germany, Latvia and Poland, she settled in New York in 1932. Here she made her debut in 1933 with the Musicians' Symphony Orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera House .

In 1934 she founded the New York Women's Symphony , a women's orchestra that existed until 1939 (most recently under the name Brico Symphony Orchestra after the inclusion of male musicians ). In 1938 she performed Jean Sibelius ' Symphony No. 1 at the Lewisohn Stadium with great success with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra .

Despite her successes, Brico failed to establish herself as the conductor of a large orchestra in New York. In 1942 she settled in Denver as a piano teacher. An application to conduct the Denver Civic Orchestra in 1945 failed. She then went to Europe and gave concerts in Sweden, Austria and Holland. Adrian Boult invited her to conduct a concert of the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall , and Jean Sibelius commissioned her to perform his complete works in Helsinki.

From 1947 to 1981 Brico led the Denver Businessmen's Orchestra (from 1967 Brico Symphony ), it was the only permanent position as a conductor that she ever got. Here it worked largely unnoticed during the 1950s and 1960s. She only gained public attention again through the documentary Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman , which the folk singer Judy Collins and Jill Godmilow produced about her in 1971-74 and which was nominated for an Oscar .

In the 1975–76 season she was able to conduct two concerts at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, during which the only recordings were made with her. As a guest conductor, she performed with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center , the Denver and Seattle Symphony Orchestras, and the American Symphony Orchestra , and gave concerts in Manila and Halifax before retiring as a conductor in 1981. As a teacher she was active until her death.

literature

  • Maria Peters: The conductor; from the Dutch by Stefan Wieczorek . Atlantik Verlag, Hamburg 2020, ISBN 978-3-455-00960-6 .

swell

Web links

See also

personal data
SURNAME Brico, Antonia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brico, Antonia Louisa (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American conductor of Dutch origin
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotterdam
DATE OF DEATH 3rd August 1989
Place of death Denver , Colorado