Jascha Horenstein
Encyclopedia
Jascha Horenstein was an American
conductor
.
Horenstein was born in Kiev
, Russian Empire
(now Ukraine
), into a well-to-do Jewish family; his mother (Marie Ettinger) came from an Austrian rabbi
nical family and his father (Abraham Horenstein) was Russian
.
His family moved to Koenigsberg in 1906 and then to Vienna
in 1911 and he studied at the Vienna Academy of Music starting in 1916, with Joseph Marx
(music theory) and Franz Schreker
(composition).
In 1920, he moved to Berlin
and worked as an assistant to Wilhelm Furtwängler
. During the 1920s he conducted the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He became principal conductor of the Düsseldorf
Opera in 1928, and then the company's Generalmusikdirektor in 1929. He had to resign his post in March 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party. His Düsseldorf tenure was the only permanent musical directorship in his career. Forced as a Jew to flee the Nazis
, he moved to the United States of America
in 1940, and eventually became an American citizen. He taught at the New School for Social Research while in New York City.
Horenstein is particularly remembered as a champion of modern music and as a Mahler conductor, although his repertory as shown by discographies was quite wide. In 1929 he conducted the premiere of three movements of Alban Berg
's Lyric Suite in an arrangement for string orchestra. In 1950, he conducted the first Paris performance of Berg's Wozzeck
.
Horenstein conducted the works of Anton Bruckner
and Gustav Mahler
throughout his career, and he also displayed ongoing interest in Carl Nielsen
, whom he knew personally, at a time when these composers were unfashionable. For example, his 1952 Vox recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 9
was the first studio recording, and the second commercial record, of that work. Several years later, he recorded the original version of Bruckner's Symphony No. 9
. He made studio recordings of several of Mahler's symphonies at various points in his career, including Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 with the London Symphony Orchestra
. A number of radio archives hold broadcast airchecks of many of the other Mahler symphonies, as well as Das Lied von der Erde
. In recent years, several of Horenstein's concert performances have been reissued on the BBC Legends label, including his celebrated 1959 Royal Albert Hall
performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 8
and his 1972 Manchester
performance of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.
Horenstein also recorded Robert Simpson
's Third Symphony and music by Paul Hindemith
and Richard Strauss
during the last few years of his life. His opera recordings included Carl Nielsen
's Saul og David
. His final operatic, and British, engagement was his March 1973 performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden of Richard Wagner
's Parsifal
.
It was during a performance of Nielsen's Fifth Symphony in Minneapolis in 1971 that Horemnstein suffered a heart attack and was caught in mid-air by the leader of the orchestra. Though warned by his doctors to reduce his workload, he continued to conduct. At the time of his death, he was planning to conduct Mahler's Fifth, Sixth and Seventh.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
.
Horenstein was born in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(now Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
), into a well-to-do Jewish family; his mother (Marie Ettinger) came from an Austrian rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
nical family and his father (Abraham Horenstein) was Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
.
His family moved to Koenigsberg in 1906 and then to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
in 1911 and he studied at the Vienna Academy of Music starting in 1916, with Joseph Marx
Joseph Marx
Joseph Rupert Rudolf Marx was an Austrian composer, teacher and critic.-Life and career:Marx pursued studies in philosophy, art history, German studies, and music at Graz University, earning several degrees including a doctorate in 1909. He began composing seriously in 1908 and over the next four...
(music theory) and Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker was an Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and administrator. Primarily a composer of operas, his style is characterized by aesthetic plurality , timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and...
(composition).
In 1920, he moved to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and worked as an assistant to Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...
. During the 1920s he conducted the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He became principal conductor of the Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
Opera in 1928, and then the company's Generalmusikdirektor in 1929. He had to resign his post in March 1933 after the rise of the Nazi Party. His Düsseldorf tenure was the only permanent musical directorship in his career. Forced as a Jew to flee the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, he moved to the United States of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1940, and eventually became an American citizen. He taught at the New School for Social Research while in New York City.
Horenstein is particularly remembered as a champion of modern music and as a Mahler conductor, although his repertory as shown by discographies was quite wide. In 1929 he conducted the premiere of three movements of Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
's Lyric Suite in an arrangement for string orchestra. In 1950, he conducted the first Paris performance of Berg's Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
.
Horenstein conducted the works of Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...
and Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
throughout his career, and he also displayed ongoing interest in Carl Nielsen
Carl Nielsen
Carl August Nielsen , , widely recognised as Denmark's greatest composer, was also a conductor and a violinist. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age...
, whom he knew personally, at a time when these composers were unfashionable. For example, his 1952 Vox recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 9
Symphony No. 9 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 9 by Gustav Mahler was written between 1909 and 1910, and was the last symphony that he completed.Though the work is often described as being in the key of D major, the tonal scheme of the symphony as whole is progressive...
was the first studio recording, and the second commercial record, of that work. Several years later, he recorded the original version of Bruckner's Symphony No. 9
Symphony No. 9 (Bruckner)
Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 in D minor is the last Symphony upon which he worked, leaving the last movement incomplete at the time of his death in 1896. The symphony was premiered under Ferdinand Löwe in Vienna in 1903, after Bruckner's death...
. He made studio recordings of several of Mahler's symphonies at various points in his career, including Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 with the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...
. A number of radio archives hold broadcast airchecks of many of the other Mahler symphonies, as well as Das Lied von der Erde
Das Lied von der Erde
Das Lied von der Erde is a large-scale work for two vocal soloists and orchestra by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler...
. In recent years, several of Horenstein's concert performances have been reissued on the BBC Legends label, including his celebrated 1959 Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 8
Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is often performed with fewer than a...
and his 1972 Manchester
Free Trade Hall
The Free Trade Hall, Peter Street, Manchester, was a public hall constructed in 1853–6 on St Peter's Fields, the site of the Peterloo Massacre and is now a hotel. The hall was built to commemorate the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The architect was Edward Walters The hall subsequently was...
performance of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.
Horenstein also recorded Robert Simpson
Robert Simpson (composer)
Robert Simpson was an English composer and long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster.He is best known for his orchestral and chamber music , and for his writings on the music of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius. He studied composition under Herbert Howells...
's Third Symphony and music by Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
and Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
during the last few years of his life. His opera recordings included Carl Nielsen
Carl Nielsen
Carl August Nielsen , , widely recognised as Denmark's greatest composer, was also a conductor and a violinist. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age...
's Saul og David
Saul og David
Saul og David is the first of the two operas by the Danish composer Carl Nielsen. The four-act libretto, by Einar Christiansen, tells the Biblical story of Saul's jealousy of the young David, taken from the Book of Samuel. The first performance was at Det Kongelige Teater, Copenhagen on 28...
. His final operatic, and British, engagement was his March 1973 performances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
.
It was during a performance of Nielsen's Fifth Symphony in Minneapolis in 1971 that Horemnstein suffered a heart attack and was caught in mid-air by the leader of the orchestra. Though warned by his doctors to reduce his workload, he continued to conduct. At the time of his death, he was planning to conduct Mahler's Fifth, Sixth and Seventh.
External links
See also
- Beate SirotaBeate SirotaBeate Sirota Gordon is a former Performing Arts Director of the Japan Society and of Asia Society, and was a member of the team that worked under Douglas MacArthur on the Constitution of Japan....
(relative)