Hugo Reichenberger

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Hugo Reichenberger around 1925

Hugo Reichenberger (born July 28, 1873 in Munich ; † October 11, 1938 there ) was a German-Austrian conductor and composer .

Life

youth

Hugo Reichenberger was the son of the Munich merchant Louis Reichenberger and his wife Pauline, née Fay from Wiesbaden. Reichenberger attended the humanistic Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich. From 1882 to 1884 he received piano and theory lessons from Heinrich Schwartz and performed as a pianist and composer in the museum hall at the age of 11 . A little later, Hermann Levi confirmed his extraordinary talent. Reichenberger was also taught and promoted by Hofkapellmeister Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer and Eugenie Menter , and from 1889 also by Ludwig Thuille . After a year in the military, Reichenberger began university studies in Munich in 1893, during which he studied the history of opera , literature , anthropology , acoustics and philosophy .

Stations of his musical work

In the summer of 1894 Reichenberger received his first engagement as second Kapellmeister and choir conductor in Bad Kissingen . Employment in Breslau , Aachen and as the first Kapellmeister in Bremen followed . In 1897 he published two song collections with Aibl in Munich. In 1898 he was appointed court conductor of the royal court theater in Stuttgart . A liaison with the popular Stuttgart opera singer Anna Sutter , from whom an illegitimate son Felix Sutter (born 1902) came, cost him the post of Hofkapellmeister in Württemberg after 5 years. In the winter of 1903 he was a very successful guest conductor with several concerts in Madrid. After Zumpes death in 1903, he took over the post of court conductor of the royal court theater in Munich for two years. There he directed several world premieres (including Wolf-Ferrari's Die curious women , Max von Schillings ' Der Pfeifertag , Karel Weis ' The Polish Jew , Weingartner's Orestes ). In 1905 he married the Munich merchant daughter Frieda Kapfer, who was 12 years younger than him, which is why he converted from Judaism to Catholicism. During his time as the first Kapellmeister at the Opera House in Frankfurt am Main from 1905 to 1908, he directed the premiere there of Richard Strauss ' opera Salome on February 6, 1907. In February 1908 he made a guest appearance at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam .

Vienna Opera

From September 1, 1908, Reichenberger began his engagement at the Vienna Court Opera , directed by Felix Weingartner , where he worked until 1935. Here he conducted the first performance of Richard Strauss' Elektra on March 24, 1909 and his first Viennese Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1911 . On March 15, 1913, Reichenberger directed the world premiere of Franz Schreker's Das Spielwerk und die Princess - at the same time as Frankfurt. Due to the great success of several guest conductors in Madrid, Reichenberger was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic by the Spanish King in March 1914 .

He served two years in the war from the summer of 1914 to 1916 in the 1st Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment, Prinzregent Luitpold . In the fall of 1916 he was given leave of absence for a tour of the Western Front, which he completed together with the singer Berta Morena and the singer Carl Perron . In August 1916 he returned to the Vienna Court Opera. On April 27, 1917, the Vienna premiere of Alexander von Zemlinsky's A Florentine Tragedy took place under his direction . On February 16, 1918 - the last year of the war - Reichenberger brought Leoš Janáček's opera Jenůfa out for the first time in Vienna. Reichenberger had previously made a special trip to Prague to form an opinion about the completely unknown Moravian composer. Not only did he vehemently advocate “Její pastorkyňa”, but also edited the translation into German by Max Brod and enforced the title “Jenufa”. There was also an exchange of letters between him and Leoš Janáček in Brno .

In 1919, Reichenberger and the singer Wiedemann, as leading men on the opera's personnel committee, were responsible for the “revolt” of the opera staff against Richard Strauss's appointment to the opera management. The event was followed by Reichenberger's falling out with Strauss. At the National Theater in Munich Reichenberger was from December 1919 to April 1920 a five-month stint and two guest conductor at the Berlin Philharmonic . In September 1920 he directed Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina at the Munich Festival and in October there was a performance of Franz Schmidt's 4th Symphony at the Berlin Philharmonic. In January 1921, guest conductors led Reichenberger to Warsaw (Philharmonic) and in autumn to the National Opera in Bucharest for two months . From 1923 to 1925 he headed the Kapellmeisterschule of the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna . In 1924 he was awarded the title of professor . Organized by Hugo Gruder-Guntram took Reichenberger 1933 an opera tour to Egypt , where among other things the opera Aida by Giuseppe Verdi in Cairo was performed. At the end of 1934 he was a guest conductor with Richard Strauss' Arabella in Antwerp . After years of service, Reichenberger received a letter of resignation from the Vienna State Opera Management on February 12, 1935 . On June 28, 1935, his 27-year career at the Vienna Court and State Opera came to an end under five different directors with Lohengrin as a farewell performance. He had been forced into retirement at the age of 61.

Munich

Reichenberger moved to his hometown Munich in the summer of 1935. After he was a guest at the Vienna State Opera several times in 1935/36, the final performance was in Vienna with Tosca on March 15, 1936. On April 23, 1936, he conducted a festival performance of Fidelio at the Théatre de la Monnaie in Brussels .

Due to a sudden cardiac death, Reichenberger died on October 11, 1938 in his apartment in Munich and was buried in the Waldfriedhof in Munich , and in 1968 transferred to the Hietzinger Friedhof (68-13-4) in Vienna. His artistic estate has been in the Austrian National Library since 2019 .

family

From the marriage with Frieda Kapfer came a son, Walter Reichenberger (1908–1990). From the affair with the opera singer Anna Sutter, he also had a son, Felix Sutter (1902–1961).

Hugo Reichenberger grave

Works

  • about 50 songs
  • 5 choral works
  • 2 romances for piano and violin
  • Pieces for piano
  • 1 symphony
  • 1 overture
  • Spring fantasy for large orchestra
  • 16 variations on the violet by Mozart

literature

in order of appearance

  • Musical Germany: Gallery of contemporaries in the field of music . Eckstein, Berlin-Charlottenburg 1902.
  • Richard Specht : The revolt against Richard Strauss (defense and appeal) . Lang, Vienna 1919.
  • Gustav Mahler : Letters 1879–1911 , edited by Alma Maria Mahler . Paul Zsolnay, Berlin and Vienna 1924
  • Riemann music dictionary . 11th edition. Vol. 2: M-Z . M. Hesse, Berlin 1929, p. 1959.
  • Marcell Klang: Austria's intellectual elite. A handbook of leaders in culture and business . Vol. 2: L-Z . Barth, Vienna 1936, pp. 739–741.
  • Wilhelm Kosch (Greetings): German Theater Lexicon , Vol. 3: Pallenberg – Singer . De Gruyter, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-317-00456-8 .
  • Teresa Hrdlicka: “You will experience joy”. On the Janáček - Reichenberger correspondence . In: Program of the Vienna State Opera, 2001/2002 season, Leoš Janáček: Jenufa , pp. 52–71.
  • Teresa Hrdlicka: "... the greatest possible singability and fluency". New insights into the creation of the German translation of Leoš Janáček's opera “Jenufa” from 1918 . In: Österreichische Musikzeitschrift , vol. 58 (2003), issue 2.
  • Georg Günther: Carmen - last act. The artists' tragedy Sutter - Obrist from 1910 and the Stuttgart Opera around 1900 . Accompanying volume and catalog for the exhibition of the Ludwigsburg State Archives and the Stuttgart City Archives. Ludwigsburg 2003.
  • Teresa Hrdlicka (ed.): Richard Strauss - Hugo Reichenberger: Correspondence . In: Richard Strauss-Blätter , Heft 52, Tutzing 2004.
  • Clemens Höslinger : The first performance of Janáček's “Jenufa” at the Vienna Court Opera (1918) and its history . In: Michael Jahn (ed.): From “Martha” (1847) to “Daphne” (1940) (= writings on Viennese opera history , vol. 1). Verlag Der Apfel, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85450-194-3 , pp. 215-232.
  • Teresa Hrdlicka: “Quickly popular with the press and the public.” Hugo Reichenberger, a Munich (court) conductor . In: Musik in Bayern , yearbook of the Society for Bavarian Music History, Volume 79/80 (year 2014/15), pp. 172–201.
  • Teresa Hrdlicka: Hugo Reichenberger. Kapellmeister of the Vienna Opera. Edition Steinbauer, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902494-77-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carmen - last act. The artist's tragedy Sutter-Obrist from 1910 and the Stuttgart Opera around 1900. Catalog for the exhibition, edited by Georg Günther, Ludwigsburg 2003, p. 57ff
personal data
SURNAME Reichenberger, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Austrian conductor and composer
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1938
Place of death Munich