| Biography | Hans Richter (János Richter) (4 April 1843 5 December 1916) was an Austrian-Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor.
Richter was born in Raab (Hungarian: Gyor), Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire. His mother was opera-singer Jozefa Csazenszky. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory. He had a particular interest in the horn, and developed his conducting career at several different opera houses in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He became associated with Richard Wagner in the 1860s, and in 1876 he was chosen to conduct the first complete performance of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
In 1877, he assisted the ailing composer as conductor of a major series of Wagner concerts in London, and from then onwards he became a familiar feature of English musical life, appearing at many choral festivals including as principal conductor of the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival (18851909) and directing the Hallé Orchestra (18991911) and the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra (19041911). In Europe his work was chiefly based in Vienna, where (transcending the bitter division between the followers of Wagner and those of Johannes Brahms) he gave much attention to the works of Brahms himself, Anton Bruckner (who once slipped a coin into his hand after a concert by way of a tip) and Antonín Dvorák (he gave the London and Vienna premieres of the Symphonic Variations); he also continued to work at Bayreuth.
Hans Richter during his career.In later years, Richter became a whole-hearted admirer of Sir Edward Elgar, and he also came to accept Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. On one occasion, he laid down his baton and allowed a London orchestra to play the whole second movement of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony itself. Never afraid to experiment on behalf of the music he loved, he lent his authority to an English-language production of The Ring at Covent Garden (1908). In 1909 he delivered the British premiere, very shortly after the world premiere in Boston, of Ignacy Jan Paderewski's Symphony in B minor "Polonia". Failing eyesight forced his retirement in 1911. He died at Bayreuth in 1916.
Richter's approach to conducting was monumental rather than mercurial or dynamic, emphasising the overall structure of major works in preference to bringing out individual moments of beauty or passion. Some observers regarded him as little more than a time-beater; but others, notably Eugene Goossens, pointed to the remarkable rhythmic vitality of his work, a quality which hardly squares with the image of Richter as a rather stolid and static personality. |