Ferenc Fricsay

Ferenc Fricsay (Szeged (Hungary), on July 31st 1914 - Basle (Swiss) on February 20th 1963), Leader Hungarian, naturalized Austrian in 1958

Biography

It shows very young person great aptitudes for the music. Very early, it entered to the Académie of music Franz-Liszt of Budapest and had as professors Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and Leo Weiner. The beginning of its career was carried out with the opera of Szeged. A little later as of 1933, it replaces his/her father with the head of the military orchestra of this same city. Because of the war, it is obliged to flee for Budapest where it organizes concerts in the basements of the Opera during the combat end 1944. At the end of the war, it leaves Hungary for Salzburg where it replaces with the foot raised Otto Klemperer in the Death of Danton of Gottfried von Einem, in 1947. The following year, it makes beginnings noticed while dirigant in Berlin Don Carlos of Verdi; consequently, it binds with the Orchestra of the RIAS of Berlin (the radio operator of the American sector of the city), with which it will work until its death. During the years 1950, he travels between Berlin, Munich and Vienna where he directs with passion the operas of Mozart and of Made green, but the disease the constrained one to slow down the rate/rhythm in the concerts and the rounds in 1958. Consequently, it connects the recordings with “its” orchestra of the Radio of Berlin (RIAS). It largely contributes to pack the catalog of Deutsche Grammophon after the war. In November 1961, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall, it gives its last concert to London; a little later it falls down sick and dies in Basle (Swiss) on February 20th 1963.

Repertory

Its repertory extended from the symphonies of Haydn to the Modern music of its time: Stravinski, Frank Martin, Karl Amadeus Hartmann… Its two authors of predilection were without question Mozart and Béla Bartók, on which he wrote a book, Über Mozart und Bartok (1962). The operas also had its favor, of Rossini to Verdi, undoubtedly for the dramatic wire that they enabled him to tie. Lastly, he excelled in the repertory of Eastern Europe: Antonín Dvořák, Liszt, and of course Zoltán Kodály.

Exceptional musician, Fricsay had an insatiable thirst for the least detail, than that is with the opera or in the concert halls. Its recordings reflect a high degree of accuracy, in particular in Mozart ( the Magic Flute , etc), Beethoven ( Symphonie n° 7 , etc) and Bartók (concertos for piano with the pianist Géza Anda or the Concerto for orchestra for example).

For its recordings of vocal works, Fricsay liked to be surrounded by a team of faithful singers and who presented all like common point very an high degree of vocal technicality and delicacy of the expression to the detriment however of volume and power of emission: Ernst Haefliger, Maria Stader, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Irmgard Seefried… It also maintained a close dialog with several concert performers such as Johanna Martzy, Yehudi Menuhin, Annie Fischer, Monique Haas,…

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