Karl Ristenpart
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Karl Ristenpart (January 26, 1900 – December 24, 1967) was a German conductor born in Kiel, Germany, who studied at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin and in Vienna. He was heavily involved in creating three orchestras in his lifetime, most notably the Chamber Orchestra of the Saar. With this group he is often considered to have created one of the definitive recorded collections of Bach's orchestral music. These recordings originally saw the light of day in the early '60s as Erato and Club Français du Disque releases in France and appeared then under license with various American labels (notably Nonesuch) on both LP and cassette. Following an out of print period, it was cause for celebration among Bach lovers when the French Accord label (Universal) released a six-CD set comprising the entire set of Ristenpart recordings of Bach orchestral works in 2000. The conductor and his colleagues from Saarbrucken have also recorded impressive performances of works by Mozart and Haydn, among others. The lasting fame he received for these interpretations of Baroque and early classical music overshadowed the fact that with his Saar orchestra he actually recorded works by approximately 250 composers, at least half of them considered modern or contemporary, for the Saar Radio. A possible influence in this direction was Hermann Scherchen, with whom Ristenpart's mother was acquainted before 1914 and to whom she was briefly married after 1918. (Hermann Scherchen was a politically active conductor responsible for the premiere performances of what were at the time controversial pieces by composers such Berg and Xenakis).
In 1932 he became the conductor of a little string ensemble in Berlin, composed mostly of women friends of his wife, pianist and harpsichordist Ruth Christensen. This ensemble came to be known as the Karl Ristenpart Chamber Orchestra and often played for the Berlin Radio and the Deutschlandfunk, mostly for exhausting live night broadcasts abroad. But Karl Ristenpart's career as a promising young conductor in Germany was hobbled by his refusal to join the Nazis. Following World War II, with Berlin divided into several foreign sectors, his unblemished political record allowed him to be named conductor for the "Radio in the American Sector of Berlin" (RIAS). In 1946 he thus started to record music, from Monteverdi to Stravinsky with the forces of his former Karl Ristenpart Chamber Orchestra, supplemented by vocal soloists and top musicians from other Berlin orchestras, under the label "RIAS-Choir and Chamber Orchestra". This constituted the second of his important periods of orchestra development and the beginning of his breakthrough to international fame as a conductor, which was also built on his ambitious J.S. Bach concert cycle from March 1947 to December 1952. From this period dates the legendary Archiv production featuring baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Herman Toettcher playing oboe and oboe da caccia in Bach’s Cantatas 56 and 82. But the worsening of the post-war political situation in Germany and particularly in Berlin also created many financial problems for German radio broadcasting in the early '50s. When it became clear at the end of 1952 that the RIAS could not go on subsidizing its orchestras, Karl Ristenpart accepted an offer to create a new chamber Orchestra for the Saar Radio, with which he was also to produce LPs for Les Discophiles français (an unusual arrangement due to the fact that the Saar region was still under French administration at the time).
He began working as conductor of the Saar Chamber Orchestra (which, out of an initial 16, included 10 young musicians who had come along with him from Berlin, among whom the Hendel Quartet) in October 1953. The ensuing collaboration with the top French instrumental soloists was especially fruitful, leading to many tours, recordings and partnerships with premier soloists such as flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal. Approximately 170 albums featuring Ristenpart and this Saar Chamber orchestra have been marketed all over the world. These include 2 recordings of the Brandenburg concertos, the orchestral Suites and the Art of fugue, several albums of Bach vocal cantatas, many Telemann, Vivaldi, Mozart and Haydn works but also award-winning records of Britten, Roussel and Hindemith pieces.
In December 1967, Ristenpart suffered a heart-attack while on tour in Portugal with the Chamber orchestra of the Gulbenkian Foundation and died in a Lisbon hospital on Christmas Eve. The Chamber Orchestra of the Saar was unable to survive the dimming of its guiding light. After 4 years under the baton of the reputable cellist Antonio Janigro, it merged with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1973.
French author Charles W. Scheel has published a biography of Ristenpart in German (Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, 1999) which he distributes privately. The Association Jean-Pierre Rampal has started releasing almost all the recordings made by French soloists for the Saar Radio, as chamber musicians or as partners of Karl Ristenpart's orchestra, as CDs under the label Premiers Horizons Disques (20 CDs scheduled; see www.jrampal.com).
(Authors: Eugene Chadbourne, amended by Charles W. Scheel)
