Felix Weingartner
Paul Felix von Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg, was an Austrian conductor, composer, pianist, and music writer. He was born on 2 June 1863 in Zadar, in what is now Croatia, to Austrian aristocratic parents. His family moved to Graz in 1868, where he began his musical studies. He later studied with Carl Reinecke and Salomon Jadassohn at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Leipzig, and with Franz Liszt at the Orchestral, Music and Opera School in Weimar, as one of Liszt's last pupils.
Weingartner began his conducting career in Mannheim and Berlin. From 1898 to 1905, he was chief conductor of the Kaim Orchestra in Munich. He succeeded Gustav Mahler as director of the Vienna Court Opera from 1908 to 1911, conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Concerts from 1908 to 1927, and also led the Vienna Volksoper between 1919 and 1924. He taught at the Vienna Music Academy.
From 1927 to 1934, Weingartner served as chief conductor of the Basel Symphony Orchestra and taught at the Basel City Music Academy. He returned to the Vienna State Opera for the 1935–36 season and held numerous guest-conducting engagements in Hamburg, Boston, and Munich. His pupils included Paul Sacher, Georg Tintner, and Josef Krips. He was married five times: to Marie Juillerat, Baroness Feodora von Dreifus, the mezzo-soprano Lucille Marcel, the actress Roxo Betty Kalisch, and the conductor Carmen Studer.
As a composer, Weingartner wrote eleven operas, seven symphonies, four symphonic poems, songs, and chamber music. His late-Romantic style has affinities with that of Max Reger, Richard Strauss, Alexander Zemlinsky, and Franz Schreker. His works include the operas Sakuntala, Agamemnon, Cain and Abel, and The Apostate; seven symphonies, including the Sixth, The Tragic, and an unpublished Choral Symphony; and symphonic poems such as King Lear, The Fields of the Blessed, The Jest, and Spring. Although his compositions are now rarely performed, he is regarded as one of the leading conductors of the first half of the twentieth century. His clear beat and modern interpretations rejected the highly Romantic conducting style used by some contemporaries.
Weingartner also wrote extensively on music and conducting. His publications include On Conducting, The Symphony after Beethoven, Advice for Performances of Classical Symphonies, and his two-volume memoirs, Memories of a Life. He was interested in esotericism and astrology and was influenced by Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, known as Bô Yin Râ, about whom Weingartner published a book in 1923. He died in Winterthur on 7 May 1942.