Willem Mengelberg

Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951), Dutch conductor. From 1895 to 1941 he was conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He trained in Utrecht and at the Cologne Conservatory, and in 1891 became conductor of the municipal orchestra of Lucerne. Following his Amsterdam appointment he raised the orchestra to the highest standards in Europe. He gave annual performances of Bach's St Matthew Passion, but his major strength was in his championship of and insights into the late-Romantic repertoire, particularly that of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Strauss dedicated his tone poem Ein Heldenleben to Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw in 1898; Rachmaninov honoured him similarly with The Bells in 1913. Mengelberg appeared regularly at the Royal Philharmonic Society concerts in London in the period from 1911 to 1914. He conducted the first cycle of the nine completed Mahler symphonies with the Concertgebouw in 1920, and the following year travelled to New York to conduct the New York Symphony Orchestra (NYSO). He continued to make annual visits to America until 1929. It was due to his suggestion that the NYSO merged with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. Sadly, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II he accepted invitations to conduct in Germany, and his generally compliant attitude bred ill feeling towards him so that after the war he was forbidden to conduct in his own country and retired instead to Switzerland. His style was forceful and dynamic, and he was always ready to adjust a score where he thought such a “changement” (as he called it) would benefit the music.