The following obituary appeared in The Australian newspaper on 14 October:

   Uncompromising conductor dedicated to art

   Georg Tintner

   Conductor.  Born Vienna, May 22, 1917.  Died Halifax, Nova
   Scotia, October 2, aged 82.

   Georg Tintner was a musician of international standing and one
   of Australia's finest postwar resident conductors, though his
   uncompromising nature did not always endear him to the musical
   establishment.

   This was to the detriment of his career but it did imbue Australian
   audiences and two generations of young musicians with some
   insight into the great Viennese performing tradition and displayed
   an extraordinary depth of scholarship, appreciation and skill.

   Tintner was the only son of Major Alfons Tintner of the Imperial
   Balloon Corps and Marie (nee Horowitz).  His parents were not
   musical, although his grandmother had once faced an adjudication
   by Brahms, who admired her looks rather than her playing.

   He began the piano at six years old and three years later joined
   the Vienna Boys Choir. The choir then consisted of only 14 boys,
   so it was an honour to be chosen, but as a Lutheran of Jewish
   ancestry among Catholics it was not an easy one. Under the
   direction of Franz Schalk, himself a pupil of Anton Bruckner,
   he sang all of the Bruckner masses and often performed with
   members of the Vienna Opera.   He remained there four years,
   occasionally conducting the choir.

   He recalled this time as of "profound and positive value to me".
   The sight of the imperious Schalk halting during a Bruckner mass
   with tears streaming down his face was one of two moments that
   influenced his decision to dedicate his life to music.  The
   other was hearing renowned German soprano Lotte Lehmann sing.

   He studied conducting under Felix von Weingartner and composition
   under Joseph Marx, graduating from the Vienna State Academy in
   1938. At 19, he was coach and assistant conductor of the Volksoper
   in Vienna, but dismissed after the Anschluss.

   In an extraordinary act of defiance, he sued the Volksoper and
   was summoned by manager; when he arrived, the man-ager had a
   leading SS officer beside him.  Tintner was offered 100 schillings
   by way of compensation but rejected it out of hand.  Somehow he
   survived, fled to Yugoslavia, then - via England and Australia
   (where he was mistakenly arrested as a spy) - went on to New
   Zealand, "because it was the only country that would take me".
   As an enemy alien he was unable to do paid work, but gave piano
   lessons and worked on a cattle and poultry farm bought by his
   first wife.

   In 1946, he took New Zealand citizenship and entered the mainstream
   of musical life then. He founded the Auckland String Players,
   and conducted the Auckland Choral Society and occasionally the
   New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

   In 1954, he moved to Australia to join the National Opera of
   New South Wales (it became the Elizabethan Opera in 1955). His
   initial tasks were menial ones.  He recalled: "I told them when
   to lift the curtain."

   His chance came in Newcastle when the chief conductor was
   indisposed just before a matinee performance of La boheme.
   Conducting without rehearsal and from memory, Tintner caused a
   sen-sation. With the Elizabethan Opera he Introduced television
   opera, with nine productions for the Australian Broadcasting
   Corporation.

   He also took his exacting standards to the bush, touring the
   outback with a troupe of singers including Donald Smith and Neil
   Warren Smith - and a piano.

   In 1966, encouraged by his friend Hephzibah Menuhin, he accepted
   an appoint-ment as musical director of the Cape Town Municipal
   Orchestra, but he found apartheid abhorrent and stayed in South
   Africa only 14 months.

   He spent three years at Sadler's Wells but with his aversion to
   concert agents, he only had a few guest engagements with the
   London Symphony and Bournemouth Symphony before returning to
   Australia in 1971 to lead the ailing West Australian Opera
   Company which, with his energy and erudition, he revived and
   enhanced.

   In 1973, he joined the Australian Opera as resident conductor
   and achieved some outstanding successes.  His Messiah in 1974
   was highly praised, while the following year his Fidelio was a
   triumph, for which he was toasted as the new Arturo Toscanini.

   A devout vegan, agnostic, pacifist and a passionate cyclist, he
   did not fit the image of the grand maestro but once on a rostrum,
   with an orchestra before him, he was transformed.  He conducted
   with-out a baton and in a manner that communicated the essence
   of the music rather than the mere beating of time.  He usually
   conducted without a score and knew 50 operas from memory.

   In 1977, unhappy with the process of appointment of another
   conductor to the Australian Opera, he resigned to become director
   of music at the Queensland Theatre Orchestra, a 28-member chamber
   group.  This was to be his longest engagement, from which
   Queensland benefited greatly.  He had a particular genius for
   inspiring gifted young musicians with his knowledge and enthusiasm.

   Some highlights of his time in Queensland include performances
   of Mahler's Second Symphony, Schubert's Ninth and Beethoven's
   Choral Symphony. His series of Beethoven's Piano Concertos with
   Roger Woodward also met with critical arid popular success.

   In 1987, In the absence of any offers from leading Australian
   orchestras, Tintner accepted the position of musical director
   of Canada's youngest orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia.  He
   continued his role as a visiting conductor on most continents
   and regularly returned to Queensland.

   He memorably conducted the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra
   last year with David Helfgott, whom he had known since Helfgott's
   darkest days in Perth.  Helfgott played Rachmaninov's Third and
   throughout rehearsals would embrace Tintner, saying: "George,
   George - you're wonderful, wonderful." International fame eluded
   him until his ninth decade, with the release by Naxos of all of
   Bruckner's symphonies.  The series was universally praised; he
   was hailed as the greatest living Bruckner-meister and compared
   favourably with Wilhelm Furt-wangler and Herbert von Karajan.

   That he did so at this great age and with orchestras not
   previously thought of as first rank makes the achievement even more
   remarkable. He had known and loved the music of Bruckner since
   he was a chorister and said in an interview last year, "Personally,
   I couldn't imagine living without his music."

   Intensive treatment for encroaching cancer and the prospect of
   not being able to perform filled him with despair and so he took
   his own life, ending three-quarters of a century of music making.

   Tintner married three times. He mar-ried Rosa Muriel Norman in
   1941, with whom he had three sons and a daughter; Cecilia Gretel
   Lawrence in 1965, with whom he had three daughters; and, In
   1978, writer and critic Tanya Buchdahl, who survives him.

   Mark McGinness (a Sydney lawyer and writer).

Note: The outback: the remote areas of Australia.

Richard Pennycuick
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