WALTER, BRUNO

WALTER, BRUNO, born Bruno Walter Schlesinger (1876–1962), conductor; the last great exponent of German romanticism. Born in Berlin,* he began studying music* at the Stern Conservatory in that city when he was eight. Although he gave a piano recital at age nine, the next year he decided on a conducting career. He was engaged at seventeen by the Cologne Opera and went to Hamburg in 1894 to work with Mahler (who advised that he drop the name Schlesinger). After conducting briefly in Breslau, Pressburg (now Bratislava), and Riga, he returned to Berlin in 1900 and then joined Mahler at Vienna's Court Opera in 1901; in 1911 he took Austrian citizenship. After Mahler's death, Walter premiered the composer's Das Lied von der Erde (The song from the earth) and the Ninth Symphony. During 1913–1922 he directed the Munich Opera (his ‘‘most beautiful and most rewarding'' years), premiering Hans Pfitzner's* Palestrina in 1917 and launching the Mozart-Wagner festivals; he was also interim conductor in 1919 of the Berlin Philharmonic. His postwar tours (he first visited New York in 1923) won him international recognition. In 1925, the year he became music director of the Berlin City Opera, he began directing the Salzburg Festival Orchestra. In 1929 he established the Bruno Walter Foundation for needy musicians and succeeded Wilhelm Furtwa¨ngler* as conductor of Leipzig's Gewandhaus Orchestra. Of Jewish ancestry, Walter was forced to resign his German positions in 1933, an event that provoked worldwide protest. Living from 1933 in Vienna, he conducted the Vienna Staatsoper and the Salzburg Festival Orchestra until 1938 and was associate conductor of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra during 1934–1939. He settled briefly in France after the Anschluss (he was granted French citizenship), emigrated to the United States in 1939, and served for several years as a celebrated guest conductor. His interpretations of Mozart and Mahler were widely acclaimed.