Klaus Tennstedt

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Klaus Tennstedt (1971)

Klaus Hermann Wilhelm Tennstedt (born June 6, 1926 in Merseburg ; † January 11, 1998 in Heikendorf ) was a German conductor and violinist . After he was concertmaster at the Städtisches Orchester Halle , he had to give up his violin career in 1952 for health reasons in favor of a career as a conductor. He subsequently worked on various stages in the GDR; In 1958 he was appointed general music director. In 1971 he moved to the FRG via Sweden . From 1979 to 1981 he was chief conductor of the NDR symphony orchestra in Hamburg. In the 1970s he achieved his international breakthrough, and in the Anglo-American region he is particularly valued for his Mahler interpretations. In 1987 the London Philharmonic Orchestra , of which he was chief conductor from 1983 to 1987, made him honorary conductor.

Live and act

Klaus Tennstedt was born in 1926 as the son of violinist Hermann Tennstedt (born 1886) and his wife Agnes Steinmetz (born 1895) in Merseburg an der Saale in the Prussian province of Saxony . His father was orchestral repetiteur , second violin of the string quartet of the Municipal Orchestra Hall and Richard Strauss known his mother amateur pianist. At the age of six, Tennstedt received his first piano lessons, and at ten he also learned to play the violin. The father acted as his first teacher.

After finishing school in Halle he took 16-year study music majors in violin at Walther Davisson and piano with Anton Rohden at the State Academy of Music on the neighboring Leipzig. He also received theory lessons from Johann Nepomuk David there . After the air raids on Dresden in 1944 he was probably used as a fireman. In the last year of the war his studies were finally interrupted.

Theater of Peace, Halle (1951)

He found his first job after the Second World War in 1946 as a concert master in Heidelberg in the American zone of occupation . In 1948 he moved back to Halle (Saale) in the SBZ and became the first concertmaster of the municipal orchestra there . He played under Walter Schartner , Gerhart Wiesenhütter and Horst-Tanu Margraf . He also appeared as a violin soloist. A disease of the left hand should end his violin career early.

In 1952 he made his conducting debut at the Theater des Friedens in Halle with Rudolf Wagner-Régeny's opera The Favorite . From 1952 to 1954 he acted as (second) Kapellmeister there under the general music director Horst-Tanu Margraf . In 1953 he took over the musical direction of Wolf-Ferraris Il campiello .

He then went to the Karl-Marx-Stadt opera house as 1st Kapellmeister . In 1955 he conducted Verdi's Falstaff in Karl-Marx-Stadt . A year later he took over the GDR premiere of Egks Circe . From 1958 to 1962 he was general music director at the state theaters of Saxony in Dresden- Radebeul . He brought The School for Wives by Rolf Liebermann and The Green Cockatoo by Richard Mohaupt the GDR premiere. In 1961 he was responsible for the world premiere of Konts Lysistrate . From 1962 to 1971 he worked in the same position at the Mecklenburg State Theater in Schwerin . Here he designed several GDR premieres such as Liebermann's Penelope , Einems Dantons Tod and Hindemith's Cardillac . For the 400th anniversary of the Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle Schwerin , he premiered the Bach Variations for large orchestra by Paul Dessau . During his engagement in Schwerin in 1967, he premiered Peter Herrmann's Concerto for Orchestra with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra . He appeared regularly with the Dresden Philharmonic and a. In 1968 he conducted the world premiere of the Harpsichord Concerto (1967/68) by Herbert Collum . He was also a guest conductor at the Komische Oper Berlin , where in 1970 he directed the ballet Undine by Hans Werner Henze , staged and choreographed by Tom Schilling . Further guest conductors took him through the Eastern Bloc . In 1968 he made guest appearances in Austria with the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra . At that time he had a wide repertoire, especially the classical and romantic works.

After a guest performance in Gothenburg , Sweden , in 1971 , he did not return to the GDR. There he worked at the Stora Teatern and for the Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester . He then moved to the FRG . From 1972 to 1979 he was Hans Zender's successor as General Music Director at the Kiel Opera House . In 1974 he made his debut with the Boulevard Solitude by Hans Werner Henze at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.

His international breakthrough came in 1974. After a performance of Bruckner's 7th Symphony , he was invited to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra by Managing Director Walter Homburger . A little later he made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Tanglewood Festival. In 1975 he signed with the New York concert agency Columbia Artists . This was followed by first appearances with the other major US orchestras in Chicago, New York, Cleveland and Philadelphia. At times he was shortlisted to succeed Lorin Maazel with the Cleveland Orchestra in Ohio. From 1979 to 1983 he was a guest conductor with the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1983 he made his debut with Beethoven's Fidelio at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

In 1976 he made his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra . The following year he signed an exclusive contract with EMI . He was also a guest with the Orchester de Paris , the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra , the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic ( Salzburg Festival 1982). In 1978 he was the first German to conduct the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra .

From 1979 he succeeded Moshe Atzmon as chief conductor of the NDR symphony orchestra in Hamburg. During a concert tour in Paris in 1981, he broke his contract prematurely. According to Ulrike Henningsen , he was troubled by “numerous cultural and political attacks by the Hamburg press against the NDR”. There were also differences of opinion with the orchestra.

After serving as Guest Conductor for the first time in 1977 and Principal Guest Conductor from 1980 to 1983 , he became Chief Conductor and Music Director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) in September 1983, succeeding Sir Georg Solti . In 1984 he toured Japan and Hong Kong. In 1985 he performed at the Music Festival in Perugia. In the 1980s and 1990s, he made repeated appearances with the LPO at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall . His repertoire included a. Mahler, Bruckner, Beethoven and Mozart. With the LPO he recorded all Mahler symphonies as well as the piano concertos by Schumann , Grieg and Brahms . For health reasons he interrupted his work in London twice in 1986 and 1987. In 1994 he ended his conducting career.

Like Kurt Masur , he was one of the “representatives of a genuinely German musical culture”. His preference was the late romanticism . In particular, he cultivated the German symphonies of Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. Tennstedt was considered a charismatic conductor and admired Wilhelm Furtwängler . A "highly expressive, inspired style of performance that occasionally confidently disregards details" was ascribed to him by Wolfgang Sandner . According to the musicologist Stephan Hörner , he “came to international fame late, tormented by self-doubt and insecurity, he found only cautious recognition in (West) Germany from audiences and critics, while in the USA and Great Britain he was one of the most important conductors of his generation was counted. "

Tennstedt, Protestant, was with the singer (Alt) Ingeborg (Inge), geb. Fischer (1924–2011), married with one child. He was the holder of a flight ticket . Most recently he lived in Heikendorf in the Plön district , where he died in 1998 at the age of 71.

Awards

Posthumously

literature

Web links

Commons : Klaus Tennstedt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Stephan Hörner :  Tennstedt, Klaus Hermann Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 26, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-428-11207-5 , p. 32 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Klaus Tennstedt , in Internationales Biographisches Archiv 16/1998 from April 6, 1998 (lö), in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  3. ^ A b c d e Hans Bohm: Performer in profile: Klaus Tennstedt . In: Musik und Gesellschaft 13 (1963), pp. 623–625, here: p. 623.
  4. ^ Jürgen Stegmüller: The string quartet. An international documentation on the history of string quartet ensembles and string quartet compositions from the beginning to the present (= source catalogs for music history . Volume 40). Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 2007, ISBN 978-3-7959-0780-8 , p. 225.
  5. ^ A b Norman Lebrecht , David Lister: Obituary: Klaus Tennstedt . In: The Independent , January 13, 1998.
  6. ↑ a b c Uwe Kraemer: Portrait: Klaus Tennstedt. His great affection is the Romanesque . In: Fono Forum 10/1980, pp. 30–32, here: p. 30.
  7. ↑ Allan Kozinn : Klaus Tennstedt, a Conductor Of Romantic Works, this at 71 . In: The New York Times , January 13, 1998, p. D22.
  8. ↑ a b c Tennstedt, Klaus . In: Rudolf Vierhaus (Ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia (DBE) . 2., revised. and extended edition. tape 9 : Schlumberger – Thiersch . De Gruyter / KG Saur, Berlin / Boston / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-096502-5 .
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Charles Barber, José A. Bowen:  Tennstedt, Klaus. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  10. ↑ a b c d Herbert A. Frenzel , Hans Joachim Moser (ed.): Kürschner's biographical theater manual. Drama, opera, film, radio. Germany, Austria, Switzerland . de Gruyter, Berlin 1956.
  11. ↑ a b c d e f Wilhelm Kosch : German Theater Lexicon . Biographical and bibliographical manual . Volume 4: Singer – Tzschoppe . De Gruyter, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-907820-30-4 .
  12. ↑ Kerstin Leiße: The conductor Klaus Tennstedt died at the age of 71 near Kiel. Farewell to the "High Voltage Maestro" . In: Dresdner Latest News , January 13, 1998, p. 8.
  13. ↑ Karl Schönewolf: "With the means of new music". “Lysistrate” sound in Dresden-Radebeul . In: Berliner Zeitung , April 11, 1961, vol. 17, issue 99, p. 6.
  14. ↑ a b Manfred Zelt: Schwerin's former GMD Klaus Tennstedt died 20 years ago . In: Schweriner Volkszeitung , January 11, 2018, p. 14.
  15. ↑ Axel Schiederjürgen (Red.): Kürschner's Musicians Handbook. Soloists, conductors, composers, university lecturers . 5th edition, Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-24212-3 , p. 181.
  16. ^ Dieter Härtwig : Dresden Philharmonic. World premieres and selected premieres 1964–1999 . In: Matthias Herrmann , Hanns-Werner Heister (Ed.): Dresden and advanced music in the 20th century. Report on the colloquium organized by the Dresden Center for Contemporary Music and the Institute for Musicology at the "Carl Maria von Weber" Academy of Music in Dresden (= Music in Dresden . Vol. 6). Part 3: 1966-1999 . Laaber, Laaber 2004, ISBN 3-89007-511-8 , pp. 224–242, here: pp. 226ff.
  17. ↑ Hans-Jochen Genzel (Red.): The Komische Oper . Edited by von der Komische Oper, Nicolai, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-87584-656-7 , p. 222.
  18. ↑ Friedrich Herzfeld (Ed.): The new Ullstein Lexicon of Music. With 5000 keywords, 600 music samples . Revised edition, updated anniversary edition, Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1993, ISBN 3-550-06523-X .
  19. ↑ Cultural survey . In: Neue Zeit , October 4, 1968, vol. 24, issue 235, p. 6.
  20. ^ Donald Rosenberg: The Cleveland Orchestra Story: "Second to None" . Gray & Company, Cleveland 2000, ISBN 1-886228-24-8 , p. 476.
  21. ↑ Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski : Too late, too early. On the death of Klaus Tennstedt . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 13, 1998, p. 13.
  22. ↑ Renate Ulm (Ed.): 1949–1999. 50 years of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra . On behalf of Bayerischer Rundfunk, Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 1999, ISBN 3-7618-1395-3 , p. 150.
  23. ^ Peter Muck : One Hundred Years of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra . Volume 3: The members of the orchestra, the programs, the concert tours, first and world premieres . Schneider, Tutzing 1982, ISBN 3-7952-0341-4 , p. 461.
  24. ↑ Vienna Philharmonic / Klaus Tennstedt , archive.salzburgerfestspiele.at, accessed: May 13, 2020.
  25. ↑ a b c Ulrike Henningsen: Klaus Tennstedt: controversial and celebrated . NDR Kultur , broadcast on June 19, 2015, accessed May 13, 2020.
  26. ↑ Performances of Klaus Tennstedt at BBC Proms , bbc.co.uk, accessed: May 12, 2020.
  27. ↑ a b c Wolfgang Sandner : From the German soul. Every rehearsal a concert: On the death of the conductor Klaus Tennstedt . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 13, 1998, No. 10, p. 27.
  28. ↑ Cultural survey . In: Neue Zeit , December 2, 1966, vol. 20, edition 281, p. 4.
  29. ↑ Artist: Klaus Tennstedt , grammy.com, accessed May 13, 2020.
  30. ↑ Conductor: Past Winners , royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk, accessed May 13, 2020.
  31. ↑ Culture and Science Award, kiel.de, accessed: May 12, 2020.
  32. ↑ Record Prize 2009 , kulturzentrum-toblach.eu, accessed: May 13, 2020.
  33. ↑ Record Prize 2015 , Kulturzentrum-toblach.eu, Access: May 13, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Tennstedt, Klaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tennstedt, Klaus Hermann Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor and violinist
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Merseburg
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1998
Place of death Heikendorf