Willem Mengelberg

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Willem Mengelberg (Utrecht, Netherlands on March 28, 1871 – Chur, Switzerland on March 21, 1951) was a Dutch conductor. His parents were both German, by birth. His full name was Josef Wilhelm Mengelberg, and he was the fourth of his parents' 16 children. He studied in the Cologne conservatory, including piano and composition. When he lived in Lucerne, Switzerland in his early 20s, he was conductor of an orchestra and a choir, and also directed a music school. Furthermore, he gave piano lessons and continued to compose.

Mengelberg is highly renowned for his work as the principal conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1895 to 1945. In addition, Mengelberg founded the long-standing Mahler tradition of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 1902 he met Gustav Mahler and became friends with him. Mengelberg was instrumental in introducing most of Mahler's work to The Netherlands, and Mahler regularly visited The Netherlands to introduce his work to Dutch audiences. In fact, he edited some of his symphonies while in the Netherlands, making them sound better for the acoustics of the Concertgebouw. This is perhaps one reason that this concert hall and its orchestra is renowned for its Mahler tradition.

Nevertheless, Mengelberg's importance as a conductor was not only due to his Mahler interpretations. He was also, for example, an exceptionally gifted performer of Richard Strauss; and even today his recordings of Strauss's tone poem Ein Heldenleben are widely regarded by critics as among the best - if not the very best - of this piece ever made. In addition, he left valuable discs of symphonies by Beethoven and Brahms, not to mention a wildly controversial but gripping reading of Bach's St. Matthew Passion.

His most characteristic performances are marked by a tremendous expressivity and freedom of tempo, perhaps most remarkable in his recording of Mahler's Fourth Symphony but certainly present in the aforementioned St Matthew Passion and other performances as well. These qualities, shared (perhaps to a lesser extent) by only a handful of other conductors of the era of sound recording, such as Wilhelm Furtwangler and Leonard Bernstein, make much of his work unusually controversial among classical music listeners; recordings that more mainstream listeners consider unlistenable will be hailed by others as among the greatest recordings ever made.

In terms of his biography, the most controversial aspect of Mengelberg's life remains his actions and behavior during the years 1940-1945, the Nazi occupation of Holland. Newspaper articles of the time gave the appearance that he acquiesced to the presence of the Nazi's ideological restrictions on particular composers. Explanations have ranged from political naivete in general, to a general "blind spot" of criticism of anything German, given his own ancestry. Because of Mengelberg's co-operation with the occupying regime in The Netherlands during World War II, he was banned from conducting in the country by the Dutch government after the war in 1945. He was stripped of his honours and his passport. The original judgment was that Mengelberg would be banned from conducting in the Netherlands for the remainder of his life. Appeals by his attorneys led to a reduction in the sentence to a banning of six years from conducting, retroactively applied to start from 1945. Mengelberg retreated in exile to Switzerland, where he remained until his death, just before his designated exile was to end.

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

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Preceded by:
Willem Kes		 Chief Conductor, Concertgebouw Orchestra
1895–1945		 Succeeded by:
Eduard van Beinum
Preceded by:
Josef Stransky		 Musical Director, New York Philharmonic
1922–1930		 Succeeded by:
Arturo Toscanini
Preceded by:
Albert Coates		 Principal Conductor, London Symphony Orchestra
1930–1931		 Succeeded by:
Hamilton Harty
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