Mengelberg, Willem

Willem Mengelberg was the fourth of fifteen children in the family of the Dutch-German sculptor Friedrich Wilhelm Mengelberg. He received his primary musical education in Utrecht from composer and conductor Richard Hall , composer Anton Averkamp and violinist Henry Wilhelm Petri. Having achieved a certain skill in playing the piano and organ , he was sent to the Cologne Conservatory , where he studied with Isidor Seiss (piano) and Franz Wülner (conducting), also studying organ, solo singing and composition.

After graduating from the conservatory in 1891 with the first prizes in conducting, piano and composition, Mengelberg was appointed general director of music in Lucerne : he conducted the orchestra and choir, was the director of the music school, taught piano and composed music. In 1895, on the recommendation of Wülner, he received the position of head of the Consertgebau orchestra in Amsterdam , which he held until 1945. At the last concert of his predecessor, Willem Kes , Mengelberg performed as a soloist in Liszt's First Piano Concerto, and soon he himself stood at the console, conducting Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony . Steadily leading the orchestra for fifty years, Mengelberg made him a team of the highest class, one of the leading world orchestras, and played with him many significant premieres, for example, the symphonic poem Life of a Hero by R. Strauss (1898, dedicated to Mengelberg and the orchestra), The second violin concert of Bartok (1939, with Z. Székéj ) and “Variations to the Hungarian folk song“ Peacock ”” by Z. Kodaj (1939).

Mengelberg laid in the orchestra the tradition of performing music by Gustav Mahler , whom he met and made friends in 1902. A year later, he invited Mahler to conduct his Third Symphony in Amsterdam, and in 1904 he dedicated a series of concerts to his work, and the Fourth Symphony in one of the concerts was performed twice - performed by Mengelberg and under the direction of the author ^[1] Such an unusual program, possibly invented by Mengelberg , the composer in a letter to his wife called brilliant. Working closely with Concertgebau, Mahler edited some of his symphonies during their rehearsals with the orchestra, adjusting the sound in accordance with the acoustics of Concertgebouw Hall. In 1920, Mengelberg held the Malerovsky Festival, during which during nine concerts all the works of the composer were performed.

In 1899, on the eve of Palm Sunday, under the direction of Mengelberg, Bach 's Passion of Matthew was performed, which has become a long tradition.

Being familiar with many contemporary composers, Mengelberg actively promoted their compositions, often performing them in his concerts, but this almost did not concern the music of the Dutch composers, for which the conductor was criticized.

In 1922, Mengelberg led the New York Philharmonic Orchestra . Since 1926, he shared the position of chief conductor with Arturo Toscanini , due to creative disagreements with which in 1928 he was forced to leave the orchestra.

In 1928, Mengelberg received an honorary degree from Columbia University , and in 1934 became a professor of music at the University of Utrecht.

The most controversial aspects of the biography of Mengelberg are his behavior and actions during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in 1940-1945. In an interview with the Nazi newspaper, Mengelberg said that when he heard about the surrender of the Netherlands to the German invaders, he raised a glass of champagne for this. During the war, the conductor gave concerts in Germany and the occupied countries and took pictures with Nazi figures, for example, A. Zeiss-Inquart . In 1945, the Honorary Musical Council of the Netherlands imposed a life ban on Mengelberg's performances in the country. In 1947, having examined the appeal, the Council reduced the ban to six years; in the same year, Queen Wilhelmina deprived the conductor of the Honorary Gold Medal. In 1949, the Amsterdam City Council deprived Mengelberg of his pension, which until then, contrary to everything, he had received from the orchestra.

Mengelberg left for Switzerland, where he died two months before the expiration.

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