Ferenc Fricsay

Fricsay was born in Budapest in 1914 and studied music under Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernst von Dohnányi, and Leó Weiner. With these and other faculty at the Budapest Academy of Music he studied piano, violin, clarinet, trombone, percussion, composition and conducting.{{cite web|url=http://fricsay.net/bioge.htm |title=Dirigent Ferenc Fricsay |publisher=Fricsay.net |access-date=2012-01-21}} Fricsay made his first appearance as a conductor at age 15, substituting for his father at the podium of the Young Musicians Orchestra of Budapest. In 1930, at the age of 16, he succeeded his father as conductor of the Young Musicians Orchestra.

On graduating in 1933, Fricsay became répétiteur for the chorus of the Budapest Opera;{{cite web|url=http://www.multilingualarchive.com/ma/dewiki/en/Ferenc_Fricsay |title=Ferenc Fricsay |publisher=Multilingualarchive.com |access-date=2012-01-21 }}{{dead link|date=December 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} then, from 1933 to 1943, he was music director of the Szeged Philharmonic Orchestra in the third largest city in Hungary; he also served as director of its military band from 1933. In 1942, he was court-martialed by the government of Miklós Horthy for wanting to employ Jewish musicians, and for having "Jewish blood" himself (according to reliable reports, his mother was Jewish). When the Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944, the chief editor of the Szeged daily newspaper warned Fricsay that the Gestapo planned to arrest him; he and his wife, Marta (née Telbisz) and three children Marta, Ferenc and Andras, avoided this fate by going underground in Budapest.

In 1945, secret emissaries offered him the co-directorship of the Metropolitan Orchestra of Budapest (later Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra); he also became principal conductor of the Budapest Opera. He conducted opera at the Vienna Volksoper and at the Salzburg Festival in the late 1940s, including world premieres in Salzburg of operas by Gottfried von Einem ("Dantons Tod" in 1947) and by Frank Martin ("Zaubertrank" in 1948). The enthusiastic reception of Fricsay's work on this international stage led to his being appointed Chief Conductor of the Berlin RIAS Symphony Orchestra and General Music Director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, from 1949 to 1952, performing then in the Theater des Westens. He made his United Kingdom debut at the 1950 Edinburgh International Festival, conducting Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Glyndebourne Festival. He made his Buenos Aires debut that year with Carmina Burana. In 1951 he made his debuts in Italy and with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. In 1953 he made his debuts in Paris, Milan, Lucerne, and the US, where he conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. He was appointed musical director of the Houston Symphony in 1954, but resigned halfway through the season over "disagreements on musical policy."{{cite book| author=Noël Goodwin | authorlink=Noël Goodwin | chapter=Ferenc Fricsay | title=New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, v. 6 | page=844 | publisher= Macmillan | year=1980 }}{{refn|The true reason involved US tax policy. He discovered that under the Internal Revenue Code he would have to declare income earned throughout the world in his US tax return as long as he spent more than 6 months residing in the United States. His contract with the Houston Symphony would have resulted in having his income becoming subject to prohibitive US tax rates. When he became aware of this problem he abruptly left Houston for Switzerland.|group=n}} He made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic in 1954. He spent much of his time from the 1950s onward in Germany as music director of the Bavarian State Opera (1956–1958) and as conductor of the RIAS Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Berlin Philharmonic. Also in 1956, he was appointed General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera, a position he held until 1958.

Fricsay gave his last concert on 7 December 1961 in London, conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the UK premiere of Zoltán Kodály's Symphony, Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto (with Wolfgang Schneiderhan), and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7."London Philharmonic Society", The Times, 2 December 1961, p. 2

He suffered from repeated illnesses throughout his life and finally succumbed to cancer of the stomach on 20 February 1963 at the age of 48 in Basel, Switzerland.File:GraveFerencFricsay-ErmatingenCemeteryTG RomanDeckert25022024.jpg reflected in the tombstone.]]

Fricsay found his final resting place at the cemetery of Ermatingen in the Swiss canton of Thurgau, where the family settled in 1952. His mother Berta, née Lengyel (1876-1963), died less than a month after Fricsay and was buried in the same grave. His grandson Dominic-Ferenc Dobay (1972-1992), his first wife Martha Fricsay-Telbisz (1915-1997) and Herta Stein (1912-2005) were buried in the same site as well. In 2015, the grave was declared by the municipality as a memorial which is protected from dissolution.{{Cite web |last=Schmalz |first=Sarah |date=2015-04-04 |title=Das Vogelnestli des Stardirigenten |url=https://www.tagblatt.ch/ostschweiz/arbon-kreuzlingen-weinfelden/das-vogelnestli-des-stardirigenten-ld.858847 |access-date=2024-02-26 |website=St. Galler Tagblatt |language=de}}

Fricsay was known for his interpretations of the music of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as that of his teachers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. According to the entry in "New Grove", he conducted without a baton, but "confounded the adverse critics of this technique by the extreme clarity and precision of his performances," to which "New Grove" ascribes "a dynamic spirit" and "vividness of character in familiar classics."

From the 1950s until his death, he recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. He led the inauguration of the rebuilt Deutsche Oper Berlin with a performance of Don Giovanni on 24 September 1961.

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{{Reflist}}

• [http://fricsay.net/inde.htm Ferenc Fricsay] website
• {{AllMusic|class=artist|id=q8224}}
• [http://www.seemoz.de/blick-in-die-schweiz/bitte-seids-so-lieb-und-machts-das-noch-mal/ Short biography and his years in Switzerland (German)]
• [http://fricsaycompetition.com/ International Ferenc Fricsay Conducting Competition (IFFCC) (Hungary)]

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{{succession box | title=Music Director, Budapest Opera | before=unknown| years=1945–1948 | after=unknown}}

{{succession box | title=co-Music Director, Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra | before=Ernő Dohnányi| years=1945–1948 | after=unknown}}

{{succession box | title=Chief Conductor, Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin | before=none | years=1948–1954; 1959–1963 | after=Lorin Maazel}}

{{succession box | title=Music Director, Houston Symphony Orchestra | before=Efrem Kurtz | years=1954–1954 | after=Leopold Stokowski}}

{{succession box | title=General Music Director, Munich Court Opera | before=Rudolf Kempe | years=1956–1958 | after=Joseph Keilberth}}

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Category:1914 births

Category:1963 deaths

Category:Hungarian male conductors (music)

Category:Hungarian expatriates in Germany

Category:Hungarian expatriates in the United States

Category:Hungarian Jews

Category:Deutsche Grammophon artists

Category:Music directors (opera)

Category:Musicians from Budapest

Category:Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Category:Jewish classical musicians

Category:Hungarian emigrants to Austria

Category:Pupils of Béla Bartók

Category:Pupils of Ernő Dohnányi

Category:20th-century Hungarian conductors (music)

Category:Deaths from stomach cancer in Switzerland

Category:Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor people

Category:Civilians who were court-martialed

Category:20th-century Hungarian male musicians

Category:Music directors of the Bavarian State Opera

Category:Music directors of the Houston Symphony

Category:Chief conductors of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin