Brisbane Symphony Orchestra announces "Romance is in the Air"

Romance is in the air

Master of Bruckner Inspires Brisbane Symphony Orchestra Program

Georg Tintner, conductor (b. May 22 1917; d. October 2 1999)

Bokarina, Sunday 24th May, 3pm

Brisbane, Sunday 31st May, 3pm

Program:

• Richard Strauss: Rosenkavalier waltzes
• Bruckner: 4th Symphony 'Romantic

What would you do?

In 1981 Antoni Bonetti was invited to return to Australia after seven heady years studying, performing and living in Europe. He was then a violinist in Mannheim Chamber Orchestra, centrally placed for tours around the cultural capitals of the world.
When with wife Ruth, he visited Australia the year before, CEO Denise Wadley extolled the potential of Queensland Theatre Orchestra. They needed a concertmaster, was he interested? Georg Tintner was Music Director.

At that Antoni’s eyes lit up. He was inspired by Tintner’s musicianship and his passion for the music of Bruckner when he played under his baton in Sydney during his late teens. It was tempting. Time to raise a family, already underway, and where better than Australia.
‘That clinched it for me, the exciting prospect to come back and work with such a master of the Austrian style,’ Antoni says. He remembers the colourful aspects; how when driving across Victoria Bridge to a concert, he passed the Maestro riding his bicycle, flying coat tails and shock of white hair. (Tintner stopped driving at age 50.)

Looking back on his 1980s performances one marvels at the musicianship and amazing score memory. His repertoire numbered about 55 operas, most of which he conducted from memory. But how little did we know or understand of the conductor’s life? This man of convictions was a pacifist, socialist and a vegan, the latter since age 37. In reaction to the carnage of World War II, and to his own post-war time as a poultry farmer in New Zealand, he refused to kill a living being or let others do it on his behalf. But what drove him and formed his ‘eccentricities’ and uncompromising stances?

The Internet fills those gaps, also quoting the biography Out of Time, the Vexed Life of Georg Tintner by his third wife Tanya Buchdahl Tintner:

Georg Tintner was born in Vienna, learned the piano at the age of six and composed from an early age. Like Bruckner, he was a boy chorister, the first Jewish member of the Vienna Boys’ Choir in its (then) 430-year history. Its director and some of the boys persecuted him for his faith. When in 1929 the choir toured Italy, they had an audience with Pope Pius XI. Tintner was the only choirboy who refused to kiss the pope’s ring.
He studied at the Vienna State Academy from 1930-37, studying composition with Joseph Marx and conducting with Weingartner. Sacked from his job as assistant conductor at the Vienna Volksoper after the 1938 Anschluss, he sued them (unsuccessfully) for breach of contract, and refused a meagre offer of compensation.

In 1939, Tintner fled as a refugee to New Zealand, arriving in 1940 after he was arrested in Australia, falsely accused of being a German spy. After a decade in New Zealand, his musical career spanned Australia since 1954 (as music director of West Australian Opera and Australian Opera), three years at Sadler’s Wells, London and his final decade as director of Symphony Nova Scotia, Canada.

Georg Tintner gained wide respect as a conductor but he thought of himself as a composer who conducted, rather than a conductor who composed. He preferred to convey his intentions with 10 fingers than one piece of wood, so stopped using a baton at the age of 47.

Tintner was described as ‘one of the greatest living Bruckner conductors.’ He recorded an internationally lauded complete cycle of Bruckner symphonies for the Naxos CD label. These CDs include the VolkFest final movement of the Symphony No. 4 (‘Romantic’), which will be performed by Brisbane Symphony Orchestra in late May.

In 1995 Antoni Bonetti led a caravan of troubadours to Europe, firstly directing St Peter's College orchestra on tour, and then driving his wife and three sons through an Arctic winter in a campervan. In the Austrian town of Sankt Florian they visited the St. Florian Monastery where Anton Bruckner was a choirboy. He returned as a teacher and was appointed organist between 1848-1855. The larger of the two organs is called the ‘Bruckner organ.’ The composer so loved this massive beast of 7,000 organ pipes that he opted to be embalmed and buried in the crypt below it.

Antoni Bonetti arranged for strings Bruckner’s sacred motet Locus Iste (‘This place was made by God’) under the title ‘Finding Sanctuary.’ Tintner loved Austrian-Catholic composer Anton Bruckner’s music for its ‘consolation’ and ‘assurance,’ adding his admiration for ‘that sort of cosmic feeling that, in spite of every horrible thing, the world can be a good place.’ The refugee Tintner found sanctuary in Australia during his difficult life; Brisbane music lovers are fortunate to have shared some years of his extraordinary talent. But Georg Tintner suffered a sad demise: after enduring six years of cancer he committed suicide in 1999.
On a brighter note, BSO’s May ‘Romantic’ concert also features the exquisite Der Rosenkavalier Waltzes. The BSO musicians will rise – or sit – to the occasion, the men dignified in tails and white tie, the ladies will frock up in the elegance of a Viennese ball.

Maestro Antoni and his wife Ruth enjoyed an uplifting performance of Richard Strauss’ Rosenkavalier in Helsinki last year. With the lyrics in German, surtitles were in Finnish, Swedish and English. The singing, staging and setting in this wonderful waterside opera house made a divine performance.

Strauss calls on massive orchestral forces, especially of woodwind and brass, with five horns and quadruple clarinets. It’s a beautiful work that Brisbane Symphony Orchestra will enjoy playing and audiences will revel in the lush tonal colours.

Program:

• Richard Strauss: Rosenkavalier waltzes
• Bruckner: 4th Symphony 'Romantic