Walter Hendl

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Walter Hendl (2004)

Walter Hendl (born January 12, 1917 in West New York , New Jersey , † April 10, 2007 in Harborcreek Township , Erie County , Pennsylvania ) was an American conductor , pianist and composer . He was u. a. Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Director of the Eastman School of Music .

Life

Hendl was born in 1917 as the son of Austro-German immigrants in West New York, New Jersey and grew up in Union Hill . In 1933 he received piano lessons from Clarence Adler in New York City. In 1936 he won the New Jersey piano competition and studied with Józef Hofmann and David Saperton at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1937 to 1941 with the help of a scholarship . In 1939 he became a digi student of Fritz Reiner .

From 1939 to 1941 he taught at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. In 1941/42 he moved to the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood , which was directed by Serge Koussevitzky , as a pianist and conductor . In 1942 he briefly entered the US Army and established a jazz and marching band .

From 1945 he was permanent conductor of the New York Philharmonic under Artur Rodziński and Bruno Walter . In 1947 he became a guest conductor and pianist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra . In 1949 he received a position as music director with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra , which he had held until 1958. In the 1950s he gave several concerts in Latin America and the United States. From 1953 he was also the first guest conductor of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra summer orchestra . He quit this activity in 1972 due to a temporary health problem. In addition, he was in charge of the Symphony of the Air , which he conducted in 1955 during a tour of East Asia .

In 1958 Hendl followed the call of his former teacher Fritz Reiner as assistant conductor to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and held this position until 1964. At the same time he was artistic director of the Ravinia Festival from 1959 to 1963 .

Hendl left the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1964 and succeeded Howard Hanson in 1972 as director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. He also taught at the Juilliard School in New York. He was also artistic advisor to the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted it occasionally. From 1976 Hendl was Music Director at the Erie Philharmonic in Pennsylvania and from 1990 Professor of Conducting at the D'Angelo School of Music at Mercyhurst College in Erie.

As a contemporary music advocate, he conducted the premiere of Peter Mennin's Symphony No. 3 with the New York Philharmonic in 1947, Bohuslav Martinů's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Rudolf Firkušný and the Dallas Symphony in 1949, Heitor Villa-Lobos Cello Concerto No. 2 with Aldo Parisot as soloist and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1954 and the American premiere of Kabalewski's Requiem with students from the Eastman School 1965. Hendl composed the incidental music for several plays and numerous orchestral transcriptions-.

In 1954 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music . From 1960 he was the national patron of Delta Omicron , an international association of professional musicians. In 1966 he was a juror at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and in 1967 he took part in the Schubert Competition in Vienna as a member of the Committee of Honor.

His best-selling records for RCA Victor were a violin concerto with the soloists Jascha Heifetz , Henryk Szeryng and Erick Friedman and a piano concerto with Van Cliburn and Gary Graffman .

Hendl was married three times and had one child. He died of a lung and heart condition.

literature

  • Alain Pâris: Classical music in the 20th century: instrumentalists, singers, conductors, orchestras, choirs . 2nd expanded, completely revised edition, dtv, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-32501-1 , p. 347 f.
  • Vincent A. Lenti: Serving a great and noble art: Howard Hanson and the Eastman School of Music . Meliora Press, Rochester 2009, ISBN 978-1-58046-054-5 , p. 195.

Web links

Commons : Walter Hendl  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John von Rhein: Walter Hendl: 1917-2007: Famed conductor helped lead CSO . In: Chicago Tribune , April 13, 2007. Accessed July 16, 2007.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.chicagotribune.com  
  2. Delta Omicron ( Memento of the original from April 3, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.delta-omicron.org