Richard Wetz
Richard Wetz was a German composer and conductor. He was born in Gleiwitz on 26 February 1875 and died in Erfurt on 16 January 1935.
The son of a merchant, Wetz studied music in Leipzig and Munich. He conducted several orchestras in Germany before becoming musical director of the Music Society in Erfurt in 1906, a post he held until 1925. From 1916 until his death, he taught composition at the conservatory in Weimar.
Largely self-taught as a composer, Wetz believed that he needed no further instruction to develop his compositional abilities fully. His music belongs to the late-Romantic style and was influenced by Franz Liszt and Anton Bruckner. His contemporaries who remained loyal to late Romanticism wondered why his works appeared so rarely in concert programmes, but around 1920 the concert world was no longer seeking a Bruckner epigone.
The Kleist Overture, Op. 16, was regarded as his most successful composition. His state of mind often informed the content of his works, particularly the First and Third Symphonies. His output also includes three symphonies, a Violin Concerto in B minor, two string quartets, a Requiem in B minor, and a Christmas oratorio based on old German poems, as well as smaller choral works and many songs.
Wetz was forgotten until his rediscovery about eighty years later. Recordings of several of his works, including the three symphonies and the Kleist Overture, have since been issued on CD.