The Wetzler Symphony Orchestra was founded in New York City by the Frankfurt born conductor and composer Hermann Hans Wetzler (8 September, 1870 – 29 May, 1943).
Wetzler, who studied at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, settled in New York City for a time and formed the symphony orchestra in 1903. Wetzler invited Richard Strauss to the city to conduct his orchestra in a "Strauss Festival", which would include most of his symphonic works. Strauss and Wetzler conducted this orchestra in this concert series beginning on 27 February, 1904 in Carnegie Hall. This series included Strauss conducting the premiere of his Symphonia Domestica on 21 March. Strauss required 15 rehearsals before he was satisfied with the orchestra's playing. On 19 March, the orchestra broke down in the middle of Don Quixote . [1]
Strauss also led the orchestra before a crowd of 6,000 in performances on 16 and 18 of April, 1904 in Wanamaker's New York store. The orchestra was short-lived, as Wetzler returned to Germany in 1905.
Richard Georg Strauss was a German composer and conductor best known for his tone poems and operas. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.
The New York Philharmonic is an American symphony orchestra based in New York City. Known officially as the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc., and globally known as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (NYPO) or the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, it is one of the leading American orchestras popularly called the "Big Five". The Philharmonic's home is David Geffen Hall, at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist, and composer. Born in Berlin, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French citizen in 1938, and settled in the United States in 1939. He worked closely with Gustav Mahler, whose music he helped to establish in the repertory, held major positions with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others, made recordings of historical and artistic significance, and is widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century.
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born American conductor. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was especially noted for his free-hand conducting style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from the orchestras he directed.
Sir Henry Joseph Wood was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences. After his death, the concerts were officially renamed in his honour as the "Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", although they continued to be generally referred to as "the Proms".
Wolfgang Sawallisch was a German conductor and pianist.
William Steinberg was a German-American conductor.
An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64, is a tone poem for large orchestra written by German composer Richard Strauss in 1915. It is one of Strauss's largest non-operatic works; the score calls for about 125 players and a typical performance usually lasts around 50 minutes. The program of An Alpine Symphony depicts the experiences of eleven hours spent climbing an Alpine mountain.
Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, is a tone poem by Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1898. It was his eighth work in the genre, and exceeded any of its predecessors in its orchestral demands. Generally agreed to be autobiographical in nature despite contradictory statements on the matter by the composer, the work contains more than thirty quotations from Strauss's earlier works, including Also sprach Zarathustra, Till Eulenspiegel, Don Quixote, Don Juan, and Death and Transfiguration.
Ernst Kunwald was an Austrian conductor.
Symphonia domestica, Op. 53, is a tone poem for large orchestra by Richard Strauss reflecting the secure domestic life valued by the composer and accordingly dedicated by him to his "dear wife and young ones."
Oskar Fried was a German conductor and composer. He was known as a great admirer of Gustav Mahler, whose works he performed many times throughout his life. Fried was also the first conductor to record a Mahler symphony. He held the distinction of being the first foreign conductor to perform in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution (1922). He eventually left his homeland in 1933 to work in the Soviet Union after the political rise of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party, and became a Soviet citizen in 1940.
Andrés Orozco-Estrada is a Colombian violinist and conductor, with dual nationality in Colombia and Austria. He was the music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony.
The tone poems of Richard Strauss are noted as the high point of program music in the latter part of the 19th century, extending its boundaries and taking the concept of realism in music to an unprecedented level. In these works, he widened the expressive range of music while depicting subjects many times thought unsuitable for musical depiction. As Hugh MacDonald points out in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "In the years prior to World War I these works were held to be in the vanguard of modernism."
The Burleske in D minor is a composition for piano and orchestra written by Richard Strauss in 1885–86, when he was 21.
Tranquillo Manoah Leide-Tedesco was an Italian-American composer, conductor and violinist.
The following is a list of musical works which received their premieres at Carnegie Hall:
The Piano Sonata in B minor, Op.5, was written by Richard Strauss in 1880–81. The Sonata is in the Romantic style of his teenage years. The first recording of the piece was the last recording made by the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould.
The Frankfurter Museums-Gesellschaft is a cultural association in Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany, which is responsible for the Frankfurt museum concerts. It manages the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester, which is both the municipal orchestra of Frankfurt and the orchestra of the Oper Frankfurt. Concerts take place in the Alte Oper concert hall. The orchestra is regarded as an important German symphony orchestra.
Hermann Hans Wetzler was a German-American composer.