Georg Tintner (1917-1999)

No. 339  of the ongoing  ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast339

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Mozart and Bruckner are on the menu for today’s Friday Blog and Podcast, both under the baton of the late Austrian-born conductor Gerog Tintner, who was for many year the music director of Symphony Nova Scotia.

As a child Tintner was a singer in the Vienna Boys' Choir, and later, at the Vienna State Academy, he studied composition with Joseph Marx and conducting with Felix Weingartner. Soon he was assistant conductor of the Vienna Volksoper.

Due to the persecution of Jews, Tintner moved out of Vienna in 1938, arriving in Auckland, New Zealand in 1940. There, he conducted a church choir until after the war, when he took over the Auckland Choral Society in 1947, and the Auckland String Players in 1948. He became a New Zealand citizen in 1946. In 1954, he went to Australia and worked with many local opera companies well into the 1970’s . Tintner is credited with pioneering televised opera in Australia.

Founded in 1983 and based in Halifax, Symphony Nova Scotia’s orchestral lineage dates back to the late 19^th century. When the Halifax Symphony Orchestra and New Brunswick Symphony Orchestra were both disbanded in 1968, the Atlantic provinces created the 48-member Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, a regional orchestra designed to tour the four provinces. When the ASO declared bankruptcy in 1983, SNS raised from its ashes.

Tintner served as Symphony Nova Scotia’s principal conductor until 1994, and as Conductor Laureate until his death in 1999. Under his leadership, Symphony Nova Scotia made six recordings, toured to Ontario and Quebec, and initiated several community outreach programs, including a production of The Nutcracker in collaboration with Halifax Dance and Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia.

In 1778, Leopold Mozart’s happy memories of their stays in Paris between 1763 and 1766 made him decide to pack his son off there to try his luck. After all, Paris was a cosmopolitan city to which many German musicians flocked. Accompanied by his mother, Wolfgang arrived in the French capital on 23 March, at a time when the concert season was in full swing. He became friendly with Jean-Georges Noverre, the Paris Opera’s ballet master. Though this final stay in Paris was a disappointment professionally, at the request of Noverre, however, Mozart composed a score for the ballet Les Petits Riens (Little Nothings). Symphony Nova Scotia’s modest size makes it ideal for the classical repertoire, as demonstrated by this fine recording Mozart’s ballet.

Tintner was described as "one of the greatest living Bruckner conductors." He recorded a much-praised complete cycle of Bruckner symphonies for the Naxos CD label shortly before the end of his life (recording sessions: 1995-98). From that set, I retained Bruckner’s Sixth symphony, performed with the (much larger) New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

I think you will love this music too.