(Organised by The B.B.C.)
Last Concert of the Festival
Relayed from
The Queen's Hall, London
(Sole lessees, Messrs. Chappell and Co., Lid.
WILHELM BACKHAUS (pianoforte)
THE B.B.C. SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA
(Leader, ARTHUR CATTERALL )
Conducted by FELIX WEINGARTNER
FELIX WEINGARTNER , who has been for fifty years, and is still, a figure of major importance in European musical activities, is one of the dwindling band who can look back to the inspiring guidance of Liszt in the great Weimar days. He was only twenty-one when his first opera, Sakuntala, was produced there. He was given his first part as conductor in the same year, at Konigsberg. From there he advanced, by way of Danzig, Hamburg, and Mannheim, to become, at the age of twenty-eight, conductor of the Royal Opera, and the Royal Symphony Concerts, in Berlin. In 1907 he succeeded Mahler as director of the Hofoper at Vienna, retiring in 1910, though he still had charge of the Symphony Concerts of the opera orchestra. During these years he was steadily winning distinction as a conductor all over Europe and America, and for a long time now has been looked up to as one whose readings of the great classics-of Beethoven especially-are authoritative. He has found time, even in the midst of so strenuous a career, to compose much himself-some eight operas, five symphonies, choral and chamber music, and many other orchestral and instrumental pieces, and several volumes of songs. His literary work, too, is both voluminous and important, ranging from the treatise on conducting to his own autobiography, this last a book of distinctive charm. As Edler von Miinzburg, he holds rank equivalent to a baronetcy in this country.