21 Facts About Willem Mengelberg

Joseph Wilhelm Mengelberg was a Dutch conductor, famous for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.

Willem Mengelberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest symphonic conductors of the 20th century.

Willem Mengelberg was the fourth of fifteen children of German-born parents in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Willem Mengelberg's father was the Dutch-German sculptor Friedrich Wilhelm Mengelberg.

Four years later, in 1895, when he was 24, Willem Mengelberg was appointed principal conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, a position he held until 1945.

Willem Mengelberg met and befriended Gustav Mahler in 1902, and invited Mahler to conduct his Third Symphony in Amsterdam in 1903, and on 23 October 1904 Mahler led the orchestra in his Fourth Symphony twice in one concert, with no other work on the program.

In 1920, Willem Mengelberg instituted a Mahler Festival in which all the composer's music was performed in nine concerts.

Willem Mengelberg founded, in 1899, the annual Concertgebouw tradition of performing the St Matthew Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach on Palm Sunday.

One criticism of Mengelberg's influence over Dutch musical life, most clearly articulated by the composer Willem Pijper, was that Mengelberg did not particularly champion Dutch composers during his Concertgebouw tenure, especially after 1920.

Willem Mengelberg was music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 1922 to 1928.

Willem Mengelberg made a series of recordings with the Philharmonic for both the Victor Talking Machine Company and Brunswick Records, including a 1928 electrical recording of Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben that was later reissued on LP and CD.

In 1933, Willem Mengelberg generated negative publicity in what was known as the "Willem Mengelberg Crisis".

Willem Mengelberg had changed his residence to Switzerland to evade high tax rates in the country.

Berta Geissmar records an incident in 1938 when Willem Mengelberg rehearsed the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Vorspiel und Liebestod from Tristan and he gave them tortuous lectures as though they had never seen the music before.

Willem Mengelberg retreated in exile to Zuort, Sent, Switzerland, where he remained until his death in 1951, just two months before the expiration of his exile order.

Willem Mengelberg was a distant cousin of the musicologist and composer Rudolf Mengelberg and the uncle of the conductor, composer and critic Karel Mengelberg, who was himself the father of the improvising pianist and composer Misha Mengelberg.

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians entry on Willem Mengelberg describes him as a "martinet addicted to meticulous and voluble rehearsals"; it notes that he did not hesitate to make what he called changements to a composer's scores when he felt it would aid clarity.

Willem Mengelberg made commercial recordings in the United States with the New York Philharmonic for Victor and Brunswick.

Willem Mengelberg recorded with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic for Telefunken.

Sound films of Willem Mengelberg conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra, during live concerts in Amsterdam, have survived; among these are a 1931 performance of Weber's Oberon overture.

Willem Mengelberg's 1939 recording of Bach's St Matthew Passion, while not captured on film, was created on a Philips optical system which used film as the recording medium.