Max Fiedler
Encyclopedia
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...
and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, born August Max Fiedler in Zittau
Zittau
Zittau is a city in the south east of the Free State of Saxony, Germany, close to the border tripoint of Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. , there are 28,638 people in the city. It is part of the Görlitz district....
, Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. He was especially noted as an interpreter of Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
.
He first studied the piano with his father, who conducted the accompanying orchestra when Max made his first public appearance at the age of ten in 1870, playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A, K.488. Continuing his musical studies in Zittau with the organist Gustav Albrecht, who had been a pupil of Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
, Fiedler then entered the Leipzig Conservatory in 1877, where the director, Carl Reinecke
Carl Reinecke
Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke was a German composer, conductor, and pianist.-Biography:Reinecke was born in Altona, Hamburg, Germany; until 1864 the town was under Danish rule. He studied with his father, Johann Peter Rudolph Reinecke, a music teacher...
, was his piano teacher. He graduated in 1882, with exceptional honours, alongside his friend and colleague Karl Muck
Karl Muck
Karl Muck was a German-born conductor of classical music. He based his activities principally in Europe and mostly in opera. His American career comprised two stints at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He endured a public outcry in 1917 that questioned whether his loyalties lay with Germany or the...
. Fiedler also studied composition and was active in the city’s musical life, developing a close relationship with Julius Spengel, a friend of Brahms.
Fiedler himself knew Brahms sufficiently well for the composer to ask him to substitute for him in a performance of his Piano Concerto No. 2
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Brahms)
The Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83 by Johannes Brahms is a composition for solo piano with orchestral accompaniment. It is separated by a gap of 22 years from the composer's first piano concerto. Brahms began work on the piece in 1878 and completed it in 1881 while in Pressbaum near...
, an invitation which Fiedler politely declined. He almost certainly heard Brahms conduct the first Leipzig performances of his Symphony No. 2
Symphony No. 2 (Brahms)
The Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73, was composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1877 during a visit to Pörtschach am Wörthersee, a town in the Austrian province of Carinthia. Its composition was brief in comparison with the fifteen years it took Brahms to complete his First Symphony...
early in 1878 (though Ethel Smyth
Ethel Smyth
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, DBE was an English composer and a leader of the women's suffrage movement.- Early career :...
later wrote that Brahms "had the knack of rubbing orchestras the wrong way... Moreover, the Gewandhaus musicians were antagaonistic to his music" ) and his Violin Concerto on New Year's Day, 1879, with the dedicatee, Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...
, as soloist, though Jan Swafford writes that it "turned out a scrambling affair, with Joachim unnerved by all the last-minute revisions and Brahms even more tense on the podium than usual." As a young man he conducted Brahms' Symphonies in the presence of the composer who, not given to reticence when expressing himself, does not appear to have complained of Fiedler's interpretations.
Having found work teaching at the Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
Conservatory
Music school
The term music school refers to an educational institution specialized in the study, training and research of music.Different terms refer to this concept such as school of music, music academy, music faculty, college of music, music department or conservatory.Music instruction can be provided...
Fiedler was soon much in demand as a pianist, winning high praise for his ‘soft tone’. His first appearance on the conductor’s podium came during the 1885–1886 season in a performance of his own composition (a symphony), and his first complete concert in late 1886. Encouraged to persevere by his first wife, he soon became one of the most popular conductors active in Hamburg, alongside von Bülow, whose musicianship he admired and whose baton technique he adopted. While it was not to be until 1903 that he took over the direction of the Hamburg Conservatory, and 1904 that of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra, from 1898 onwards Fiedler was active abroad as a guest conductor, appearing in Russia, where he was compared to Nikisch and Weingartner, Madrid (1899), Paris (1901), Turin (1904), Rome (1906, 1908) and London (1907, 1908). Throughout this period he developed a reputation as a major interpreter of the music of Brahms, as well as a conductor with ‘complete mastery’ of the orchestra (The Musical Times on his account of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 ‘Pathétique’, with the young 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:...
in December 1907).
In 1908 Karl Muck, then the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
, recommended Fiedler as his successor as conductor of the orchestra, and he was duly appointed, having already appeared in America during 1905, when he had conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra alongside Mengelberg and a year before the guest appearance of a German conductor noted for his Brahms, Fritz Steinbach
Fritz Steinbach
Fritz Steinbach was a German conductor and composer who was particularly associated with the works of Johannes Brahms. Born in Grünsfeld, he was the brother of conductor Emil Steinbach. He studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and in Vienna. Among his teachers were Martin Gustav Nottebohm and Anton...
. Although he spent four years at the helm in Boston, his conducting attracted some criticism, especially for his volatility as an interpreter, which was viewed as pleasing ‘the general public’ rather than ‘connoisseurs’. Fiedler returned to Hamburg in 1912, where Siegmund von Hausegger was now in charge of the Philharmonic Orchestra; and since co-residence was likely to be difficult, given his own status as a former conductor of this orchestra, Fiedler withdrew 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...
, where he became an active guest conductor of the city’s various orchestras. In 1916 a Berlin critic hailed him as ‘the greatest Brahms conductor of the present day’, and during the same year he accepted the position of conductor of the Essen
Essen
- Origin of the name :In German-speaking countries, the name of the city Essen often causes confusion as to its origins, because it is commonly known as the German infinitive of the verb for the act of eating, and/or the German noun for food. Although scholars still dispute the interpretation of...
Orchestra, in succession to Hermann Abendroth, who was moving to Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
to replace Steinbach.
At Essen Fiedler consolidated his reputation as a major figure in German musical life, conducting a wide repertoire that included contemporary composers such as Braunfels
Braunfels
Braunfels is a town in the Lahn-Dill-Kreis in Hesse, Germany. It is located on the German Framework Road.- Location :The climatic spa of Braunfels lies at a height of some 100 m above the Lahn valley...
, Szymanowski and Honegger
Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...
, as well as each year organising a festival devoted to a major single composer. In addition he guest-conducted the Berlin Philharmonic occasionally, and from 1927 was co-conductor of the Essen Folkwangschule. In 1929 he married for the second time and in 1934 gave up his position in Essen, returning once more to Berlin where he conducted the Berlin Radio Orchestra, as well as that of Hamburg. During 1939 he made a series of farewell appearances in Berlin and Essen, but towards the end of the year he became fatally ill, dying in Stockholm, Sweden just a few weeks short of his eightieth birthday.
Legacy
Fiedler made several commercial recordings, all of music by Brahms, apart from two overtures by Weber. He recorded the Academic Festival OvertureAcademic Festival Overture
Academic Festival Overture , Op. 80, by Johannes Brahms, was one of a pair of contrasting concert overtures — the other being the Tragic Overture, Op. 81, written to balance it as its pair...
, Symphony No. 2, two movements from the Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Symphony No. 4
Symphony No. 4 (Brahms)
The Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 by Johannes Brahms is the last of his symphonies. Brahms began working on the piece in 1884, just a year after completing his Symphony No...
with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition a number of his later radio performances have been preserved: these include accounts of Brahms’s Violin Concerto and Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
’s Symphony No. 1
Symphony No. 1 (Schumann)
Symphony No. 1 in B flat major, Op. 38 was the first symphonic work composed by Robert Schumann. Although Schumann made some "symphonic attempts" in the autumn of 1840 soon after he married his beloved Clara Wieck, he did not compose his First Symphony until early 1841...
from Berlin. Because of his contemporary stature as an interpreter of Brahms and his direct contact with the composer, it is easy to consider Fiedler’s performances of Brahms as being in some way ‘authentic’. However the English writer Christopher Dyment has written that, while Fielder was a conductor who ‘…most fully explored every facet of Brahms’s emotional world’, nevertheless his performances, because of their constant shifts of tempo and mannered phrasing—for instance the frequent introduction of unwritten luftpausen—reflected an interpretative model that owed far more to von Bülow than to Brahms. Dyment concluded that in Fiedler’s recording of the Symphony No. 4, for instance, ‘…Brahms’s demands for flexibility are here supplied in over-abundance.’ Nonetheless, even if Fiedler’s recordings do represent a highly individualised interpretative approach, they still allow a fascinating glimpse into a world of musical performance only imperfectly chronicled, for historical reasons, by the gramophone
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
.
Fiedler's own compositions include a symphony, overture, piano quintet, string quartet, and piano pieces and songs.
Fiedler had a son named Max George Fiedler (1898–1977). Fiedler came to the US in about 1925. From 1930 on, he was engaged in advanced diesel engine research in the hopes of building a cleaner, quieter, and lighter automotive diesel engine. He gave a paper entitled, "A New Theory of Diesel Combustion" in 1939, the year his father died, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pa. A paper discussing Fiedler's work and putting it into a modern context by Baxter and Hiltner was published by ASME in 2001.