Fritz Reiner - Biography
Fritz Reiner the great Hungarian conductor was born in Budapest on December 19th 1888 in Budapest and died on November 15th 1963 in New York. Reiner came from a middle class secular Jewish family on the Pest side of the Danube. Reiner was initially to be trained for the law and concurrently took up studies in music at the Royal Academy of music in Budapest. One of the teachers he came in contact with was the great composer Bela Bartok who was six years his senior and Reiner was to become a major interpreter of. Reiner first engagement as a conductor was the Budapest Volksoper in 1911 and 1914 he was to become conductor of the prestigious Dresden Court (later State) Opera from 1914 till 1921. It was here that he was to come in contact with Richard Strauss whose operas were often premiered in Dresden. In 1922 Reiner became music director of the Cincinnati Symphony a position he held for nine years. Reiner became a naturalized US citizen in 1928 and married his third wife Carlotta Irwin. Reiner created high standards at Cincinnati and surprisingly became an advocate of Gershwin who he was to become friends with. In 1931 Reiner became the Chairmen of the Conducting Department at Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where his prize student was Leonard Bernstein. During this period he became a guest conductor at Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the San Francisco Opera.In1938 he was to become conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra a post he was to hold for ten years.
Reiner during his years at Curtis and Pittsburgh cultivated his reputation for being a formidable disciplinarian. He accepted nothing less than perfection and if you didn’t meet his standards you could expect withering sarcasm and eventual termination. Two well know anecdotes, a Pittsburgh musician decided to mock Reiner’s tiny beat which forced musicians to concentrate by bringing a pocket telescope to a rehearsal, he was summarily fired. A student at Curtis was during poorly, Reiner gave him a nickel to call his father and tell him he wasted his tuition money. Allied to this was his fearsome gaze and resemblance to Bela Lugosi,
Reiner was engaged at the Met Opera in 1949 and at his debut gave a spectacular performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome starring the Bulgarian Soprano Ljuba Weltisch. Other highlights were productions of Der Rosenkavalier and Carmen with Risa Stevens and the American premier of Stravinsky’s Rakes Progress (Reiner was one of the few celebrity conductors who had Stravinsky’s respect).
Reiner became the conductor of the Chicago Symphony in 1953 and it was during his tenure there that he made the orchestra one of the finest in the world and created much of his posthumous fame. He started his series of celebrated RCA recordings with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony and Richard Strauss’s tone poems Also Sprach Zarathustra and Ein Heldenleben. While credit should be given to the RCA engineers, the Chicago Symphony and the acoustics of Orchestra Hall Reiner directs performance of great clarity and astonishing power. In 1955 Reiner recorded his incomparable performance o Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra a work which he helped bring into being by convincing famed conductor Serge Koussevitzky to commission it in 1943. The next few years in Chicago were to document one success after the other with recordings of the standard repertoire that went from strength to strength. Reiner did once complain that he had to record the 1812 Overture and Nutcracker in order to make a recording of Mahler’s Das Lied von Der Erde. He hadn’t mellowed any; the incomparable First Trumpet in Chicago Adolph Herseth was made to play the difficult ‘cocks crow’ trumpet solo in Zarathustra again and again till Reiner was satisfied, Herseth evidently gave Reiner another performance outside his home at 3 AM. Reiner suffered a serious heart attack in 1960 and missed most of that season. He never fully recovered his strength and retired from the orchestra in 1962. In semi retirement he gave occasional performances and made recordings. While preparing for a performance of Wagner’s Die Gotterdammerung he suffered another heart attack and died on November 15th 1963.
Sometimes in art one needs a touch of autocracy to get the highest of standards. Fritz Reiner was evidently a very difficult man who set uncompromising standards and sometimes terrorized musicians to get what he wanted. He was an absolute master of conducting technique and his famed recordings are a great legacy.
