Hans Knappertsbusch facts for kids

Hans Knappertsbusch

Hans Knappertsbusch (born March 12, 1888 – died October 25, 1965) was a famous German conductor. He was best known for leading orchestras in music by composers like Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner, and Richard Strauss.

Knappertsbusch followed the usual path for conductors in Germany in the early 1900s. He started as a helper for musicians and slowly moved up to more important conducting jobs. In 1922, when he was 34, he became the main music director for the Bavarian State Opera. He held this important job for eleven years. In 1936, the government at the time removed him from his position. After that, he often conducted as a guest in Vienna and at the Bayreuth Festival. His performances of Wagner's opera Parsifal there became very famous.

Hans Knappertsbusch didn't really like making studio recordings. His most well-known recordings were made live during performances at Bayreuth. He passed away at 77 years old, after a bad fall the year before.

Life and Career
His Legacy
- Recordings
See also

Life and Career

Becoming a Conductor

Knappertsbusch was born in Elberfeld, which is now part of Wuppertal, on March 12, 1888. He was the second son of Gustav Knappertsbusch, who owned a factory. As a child, he played the violin and later the cornet. By age 12, he was already leading his high school orchestra.

His parents didn't want him to become a musician. So, he went to Bonn University to study philosophy. But from 1908, he also went to the Cologne Conservatory. There, he studied conducting with the school's head, Fritz Steinbach.

He conducted at the Mülheim-Ruhr theater from 1910 to 1912. What was more important, according to a famous music dictionary, were his summers helping Siegfried Wagner and Hans Richter at the Bayreuth Festival.

Early Conducting Jobs

Knappertsbusch started his career as a conductor in Elberfeld. During World War I, he served in the German army as a musician in Berlin. In May 1918, he married Ellen Selma Neuhaus. They had one child, Anita.

After conducting in Leipzig (1918–1919), he took over from Franz Mikorey in 1919 in Dessau. This made him Germany's youngest main music director.

When Bruno Walter left Munich in 1922, Knappertsbusch took his place. He became the main music director for the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Bavarian State Opera. In 1925, Knappertsbusch and his wife divorced. The next year, he married Marion von Leipzig. This marriage lasted for the rest of his life, and they did not have children.

Knappertsbusch stayed in Munich for eleven years. He invited famous guest conductors like Richard Strauss and Sir Thomas Beecham. He also received much praise for his own conducting. After a 1931 performance of Parsifal, one reviewer said he gave a "well-balanced interpretation... full of life." He was musically traditional, but he did conduct the first performances of several new operas during his time in Munich.

Challenges and Successes

In 1936, the government that had taken power in Germany in 1933 ended Knappertsbusch's job contract at the State Opera. There were several reasons for this. He refused to join the ruling political party and often spoke badly about the government. Also, he didn't care much about budget limits. And the country's leader, who had strong ideas about music, didn't like Knappertsbusch's slow musical speeds.

For the next nine years, Knappertsbusch mostly worked in Austria. He conducted at the Staatsoper and the Salzburg Festival. He also continued his long work with the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. He was allowed to keep conducting under the government's rule, even though he couldn't work in Munich. In Vienna, on June 30, 1944, he conducted the last performance at the old Staatsoper. The building was destroyed by bombs just hours later.

The head of the Vienna Philharmonic remembered:

The bombing of Vienna was starting. Shells were already falling in June. Everyone in the orchestra knew that Götterdämmerung would be our last show in the old building. It felt like the end of an era. Knappertsbusch conducted, and I think it was one of the greatest performances of his life.

After the War

After the war, many people in Munich wanted Knappertsbusch to return. But like other leading musicians who had worked during the previous government's rule, he had to go through a process of checking their past actions. The American forces in charge then chose Georg Solti as the main music director for the State Opera. Solti, a young Jewish musician, had been in Switzerland during the war.

Solti later remembered:

Of all the people who might have been upset by my job in Munich after the war, Hans Knappertsbusch had the most reason. But he was the one man who truly helped me, because I was new to the job. He was like a father to me."

After this, Knappertsbusch mostly worked as a guest conductor. He turned down an offer to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. But he kept appearing as a guest artist in Vienna and other places. He became a very important part of the Bayreuth Festival. He conducted the first performances of Der Ring des Nibelungen when the festival reopened after the war in 1951. He openly disliked the simple and modern productions by Wieland Wagner. However, he returned to the festival almost every year for the rest of his life. He was most connected with Parsifal there. Out of his 95 appearances at Bayreuth, 55 were conducting Parsifal.

He worked mainly in Germany and Austria. But he also conducted in Paris sometimes, including a 1956 performance of Tristan und Isolde with Astrid Varnay at the Opéra. He returned to the Bavarian State Opera in 1954 and continued to conduct there. In 1955, he returned to the Vienna State Opera to conduct Der Rosenkavalier. This was one of the shows celebrating the reopening of that theater.

In 1964, Knappertsbusch had a bad fall and never fully recovered. He died on October 25, 1965, at the age of 77. He was buried in the Bogenhausen cemetery in Munich. His fellow musicians greatly missed him. In 1967, record producer John Culshaw wrote:

It's rare for an orchestra and a conductor to truly love each other. Especially with an orchestra as old and proud as the Vienna Philharmonic. The older members still speak with great respect about Furtwängler and Richard Strauss. They speak with deep respect for Erich Kleiber and Clemens Krauss and Bruno Walter. For others, still living, they have mixed feelings. But for Hans Knappertsbusch, they had love.

His Legacy

Knappertsbusch, often called "Kna," was described as a "rough humanist." He could have very strong outbursts during rehearsals, usually at singers. He got along much better with orchestras. John Culshaw wrote about him:

He was the kindest, most humble conductor I ever worked with. He was always generous to his colleagues. He would never chase fame and honor. In the theater, I believe he was a superb Wagner conductor. I know why orchestras loved him. I know why we loved him.

Recordings

Knappertsbusch didn't take making recordings as seriously as some other conductors. Even though he was praised for recordings like his 1931 Munich version of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, he wasn't comfortable in a recording studio. Culshaw explained:

The truth was that Knappertsbusch didn't like recording conditions. No matter what we did, the amazing talent he showed in the theater didn't come alive in the studio. He needed the feeling of the theater, the excitement of a live show. He needed the uncertainty of the theater, and the comfortable feeling that in the theater, a conductor can take big risks. If something goes wrong, only a few people in the audience will notice, and the orchestra will understand and forgive. None of this applies to recording, and the pressure was too much for him.

For Decca, Knappertsbusch mostly recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic. But he also recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, and the Suisse Romande Orchestra. He mostly recorded music by Wagner, including a full studio recording of Die Meistersinger. But he also recorded works by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, and Weber.

Some of Knappertsbusch's best-loved recordings were made during live performances at Bayreuth in the 1950s and 1960s. A Parsifal from 1951 was released by Decca. A 1962 performance was recorded by Philips. Both of these recordings are still available today. When the 1962 set was put on CD, Alan Blyth wrote in Gramophone magazine that "this is the most touching and satisfying account of Parsifal ever recorded."