24 Facts About Hans Knappertsbusch

Hans Knappertsbusch was a German conductor, best known for his performances of the music of Wagner, Bruckner and Richard Strauss.

Hans Knappertsbusch followed the traditional route for an aspiring conductor in Germany in the early 20th century, starting as a musical assistant and progressing to increasingly senior conducting posts.

Hans Knappertsbusch died at the age of 77, following a bad fall the previous year.

Hans Knappertsbusch was born in Elberfeld, today's Wuppertal, on 12 March 1888, the second son of a manufacturer, Gustav Hans Knappertsbusch, and his wife Julie, nee Wiegand.

Hans Knappertsbusch's parents did not approve of his aspirations to a musical career, and he was sent to study philosophy at Bonn University.

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Hans Knappertsbusch conducted at the Mulheim-Ruhr theatre from 1910 to 1912; more significant, according to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, were his summers as assistant to Siegfried Wagner and Hans Richter at Bayreuth.

Hans Knappertsbusch began his career with a conducting post in Elberfeld.

When Bruno Walter left Munich for New York in 1922, Hans Knappertsbusch succeeded him as general music director of the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Bavarian State Opera.

Hans Knappertsbusch invited guest conductors such as Richard Strauss and Sir Thomas Beecham, and won high praise for his own conducting.

Hans Knappertsbusch guest-conducted in Budapest, and at Covent Garden, London.

Hans Knappertsbusch was allowed to go on conducting under Nazi rule, although Munich remained closed to him.

Hans Knappertsbusch declined an invitation to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, but has appeared as a guest artist in Vienna and elsewhere, and became a pillar of the Bayreuth Festival.

Hans Knappertsbusch conducted the first performances of Der Ring des Nibelungen at the festival's post-war reopening in 1951.

Hans Knappertsbusch was outspoken in his dislike of Wieland Wagner's frugal and minimalist productions, but returned to the festival most years for the rest of his life.

Hans Knappertsbusch was most associated there with Parsifal: of his 95 appearances at Bayreuth, 55 of them were conducting it.

Hans Knappertsbusch worked mainly in Germany and Austria, but conducted in Paris from time to time, including a 1956 Tristan und Isolde with Astrid Varnay at the Opera.

Hans Knappertsbusch returned to the Bavarian State Opera in 1954, and continued to conduct there for the rest of his life.

In 1964 Hans Knappertsbusch had a bad fall, from which he never fully recovered.

Hans Knappertsbusch, known familiarly as "Kna", was described as a ruppiger Humanist .

Hans Knappertsbusch was capable of ferocious tirades in rehearsal – usually at singers: he got on much better with orchestras.

Hans Knappertsbusch did not take the gramophone as seriously as some of his colleagues did.

Decca, Hans Knappertsbusch recorded mostly with the Vienna Philharmonic, but with the London Philharmonic, the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and the Suisse Romande Orchestra.

Recordings made for RIAS feature Hans Knappertsbusch conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in symphonies by Beethoven, Bruckner, Haydn, and Schubert .

Some of Hans Knappertsbusch's best-received recordings were made during live performances at Bayreuth in the 1950s and 1960s.