Günter Wand (January 7, 1912
in Elberfeld
, Germany
– February
14, 2002 in Ulmiz near Bern
, Switzerland
) was a German orchestra
conductor and composer.
Wand
studied in Wuppertal
, Allenstein
and Detmold
. At
the Cologne conservatory, he was a composition student with
Philipp Jarnach and a piano student
with
Paul Baumgartner. He was a
conducting pupil of Franz von Hoesslin in Munich, but was otherwise
largely self-taught as a conductor.
Career
Cologne
Wand started his career in
Cologne, where he
was to stay for several decades, as a conductor of the Cologne
Opera in 1939. After
World War II his
position in Cologne was consolidated as he became
Generalmusikdirektor in charge of both the opera and the
Gürzenich Orchestra, which he conducted until 1974.
In 1948, he also started teaching conducting at a music school in
Cologne.
From the early 1950s he guest-conducted a
number of orchestras, making his London
debut in
1951 with the London Symphony
Orchestra. Other orchestras who invited him included the
WDR Symphony Orchestra
Cologne and
Munich
Philharmonic Orchestra.
After several recordings of
Mozart,
Haydn and
Beethoven with the Gürzenich for a
French subscription collection in the mid 1950s, he made no studio
recordings for about three decades with the exception of an
appearance with the
Vienna
Philharmonic Orchestra on
Decca
Records, accompanying
Wilhelm
Backhaus in
Robert Schumann's
Piano Concerto (his only
recording with that orchestra). In the 1970s he recorded the
complete symphonies of
Franz Schubert
and
Anton Bruckner with the
WDR Symphony Orchestra
Cologne.
Hamburg and late years
In 1982, Wand became chief conductor of the
NDR Symphony Orchestra. With the
latter ensemble, he was able to record the complete symphonies of
Beethoven and
Brahms as well as
works by Mozart,
Tchaikovsky,
Debussy, Schubert and Schumann. He also
remade Bruckner's symphonies 3 to 9.
In January 1982, Wand conducted the
BBC Symphony Orchestra for the first
time, and was appointed principal guest conductor of the orchestra
that same year. Wand was noted for demanding considerable rehearsal
time, a minimum of 5 to 8 rehearsals, for his London concerts. For
his first appearance with a US orchestra, the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra in
1989, he asked for and received 11 hours of rehearsal time. Wand
subsequently recorded the Brahms
Symphony No. 1, part of that first U.S. program,
with the
Chicago Symphony
Orchestra.
The highlights of Wand's late career were his annual guest
appearances with the
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra,
which he conducted in Schubert's
"Unfinished" and
"Great" symphonies (1995) and
Bruckner's
Fifth (1996),
Fourth (1998),
Ninth (1998),
Seventh (1999) and
Eighth (2001) symphonies.
Repertoire
In his late years, Wand restricted his repertoire almost
exclusively to the symphonies of Anton Bruckner (which he had never
conducted until he was over 60), Schubert, Brahms, Beethoven and
Mozart. Earlier in his career, however, he was a devoted
interpreter of the
contemporary music of such
composers as
Bernd Alois
Zimmermann,
Olivier Messiaen,
Frank Martin,
György Ligeti, and
Edgard Varèse.
Compositions
Wand also composed music, mostly songs with orchestral
accompaniment and music for ballet. One composition was his
concertino "Odi et amo", for soprano and chamber orchestra, which
Wand wrote for his wife, the soprano Anita Westhoff, who survived
him.
Awards
He was awarded the German Record Award, the German Record Critic's
Prize, the
Echo Award, the Diapason d'Or and
the
Hans von Bülow
Medal.
References
External links
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