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 [log in to unmask]