Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt |

Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt

Schmidt-Isserstedt’s conducting career is quite clearly divided into two parts. The first of these is a long period of work as an opera conductor, which he began in Wuppertal and continued in Rostock, Darmstadt. Schmidt-Issershtedt came to the opera house, graduating from the Higher School of Music in Berlin in composition and conducting classes and in 1923 received a doctorate in music. In the late thirties he headed the Hamburg and Berlin operas. A new stage in the activities of Schmidt-Isserstaedt came in 1947, when he was asked to organize and lead the orchestra of the North German Radio. At that time in West Germany there were many excellent musicians who were out of work, and the conductor quickly managed to create a viable band.

Working with the North German Orchestra revealed the strengths of the artist’s talent: the ability to work with musicians, to achieve coherence and ease of performance of the most difficult works, a sense of orchestral proportions and scales, consistency and accuracy in the implementation of the author’s ideas. These features are most evident in the performance of German music, which occupies a central place in the repertoire of the conductor and the ensemble he leads. The works of his compatriots – from Bach to Hindemith – Schmidt-Issershtedt interprets with great willpower, logical persuasiveness and temperament. Of other composers, the contemporary authors of the first half of the XNUMXth century, especially Bartok and Stravinsky, are closest to him.

Schmidt-Issershtedt and his team are familiar to listeners from many European and American countries, where German musicians have toured since 1950. In 1961, the North German Radio Orchestra, led by its leader, gave a number of concerts in the USSR, performing works by Bach, Brahms, Bruckner, Mozart, R. Strauss, Wagner, Hindemith and other composers.

L. Grigoriev, J. Platek, 1969