Johann Baptist Isidor Richter (Hungarian: Richter János Isidor; 4 April 1843 – 5 December 1916) was an Austro-Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor.
Biography Richter was born in Raab (Hungarian: Győr), Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire. His father was a local composer, conductor and regens chori Anton Richter. His mother was opera singer Jozefa Csazenszky. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory. He had a particular interest in the horn, and developed his conducting career at several different opera houses in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He became associated with Richard Wagner in the 1860s, and played the solo trumpet part in the 1870 private première of the Siegfried Idyll. In 1876, he was chosen to conduct the first complete performance of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
In 1877, he assisted Wagner as conductor of a series of concerts in London. He subsequently appeared at numerous British choral festivals, served as principal conductor of the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival from 1885 to 1909, and conducted the Hallé Orchestra (1899–1911) from 1899 to 1911 and the London Symphony Orchestra from 1904 to 1911. Richter's work in continental Europe was based chiefly in Vienna, where he conducted works by Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner and Antonín Dvořák as well as Richard Wagner. He conducted the London and Vienna premieres of Dvořák's Symphonic Variations and continued to work at Bayreuth.
In his later career, Richter conducted and promoted works by Edward Elgar and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. On one occasion, he laid down his baton and allowed a London orchestra to play the whole second movement of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony itself. In January and February 1909, Richter conducted an English-language production of The Ring at Covent Garden. In 1909 he delivered the British première, shortly after the world première, in Boston, of Ignacy Jan Paderewski's Symphony in B minor "Polonia". Failing eyesight forced his retirement in 1911. He died at Bayreuth in 1916.
Richter's approach to conducting was monumental rather than mercurial or dynamic, emphasising the overall structure of major works in preference to bringing out individual moments of beauty or passion. Assessments of Richter's conducting varied. Eugene Goossens emphasized its rhythmic vitality, while other commentators characterized Richter primarily as a conductor concerned with maintaining tempo.
A rebuke he is supposed to have made to a musician in the Covent Garden orchestra is still sometimes quoted: "Up with your damned nonsense will I put twice, or perhaps once, but sometimes always, by God, never."
Notable premières
Richard Wagner Siegfried (1876) Götterdämmerung (1876)
Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 2 (1877) Tragic Overture (1880) Piano Concerto No. 2 (1881; soloist: composer) Symphony No. 3 (1883)
Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 4 (1881) Te Deum (1885) Symphony No. 8 (1892)
Ernst von Dohnányi
Symphony No. 1 (1901)
Edward Elgar
Enigma Variations (1899) The Dream of Gerontius (1900) Symphony No. 1 (1908)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Violin Concerto (1881; soloist: Adolph Brodsky)
Notes
References
Further reading
Christopher Fifield. Foreword by Georg Solti. True Artist and True Friend: A Biography of Hans Richter. Oxford University Press, 1993. . (The title is from Elgar's dedication of his Symphony No. 1.)