>From the Toronto "Globe and Mail", March 10:
Baton-slinger Tintner honoured in Halifax Conductor praised for superb
Bruckner cycle
Wednesday, March 10, 1999
DAVID LASKER
Special to The Globe and Mail
Toronto -- Yesterday morning at Province House in Halifax, Nova Scotia
Premier Russell MacLellan awarded the $25,000 Portia White Prize to
Georg Tintner, conductor laureate of Symphony Nova Scotia. The prize
-- named for Portia White (1911-1968), a schoolteacher in Halifax's
Africville district who became an internationally renowned contralto
-- is given annually by the Nova Scotia Arts Council to recognize
cultural excellence in the province.
Born in Vienna in 1917, Tintner has gained world attention in his
autumn years for his ongoing cycle of late-19th-century Austrian
composer Anton Bruckner's symphonies and masses, recorded for the
budget label Naxos. Sweden's Musik And Ljudteknik declared in August,
"Tintner's [Bruckner Sixth] is the most satisfactory version on record
ever." The New York Times wrote that his Fifth "is among the most
lucid and radiant to be found on disks." And in January, Titner's
visage graced the cover of Britain's Gramophone, the world's pre-eminent
record-review magazine.
In his own time, Bruckner let well-meaning students and conductors
tamper with his difficult symphonies to make them more acceptable to
the public, so his works are available in a farrago of editions.
Tintner has gone back to the originals.
"My main guidance in my Bruckner cycle is that I do not consider
him 'a genius without talent,' as Mahler said," Tintner commented
in a telephone interview from Halifax, where he lives with his wife,
journalist Tanya Buchdahl. "I do exactly what Bruckner wrote, without
the interference of others."
Tintner joined the Vienna Boys Choir when he was 9, and at 13 he
entered the Vienna State Academy, where he studied with the legendary
Felix von Weingartner. "He conducted the Brahms symphonies in front
of Brahms and told us what Brahms said," Tintner recalled.
Tintner was appointed assistant conductor at the Vienna Volksoper
when he was 19, but in 1938 he fled from the Nazis and finally arrived
in New Zealand, where he became music director of the Auckland String
Players and Choral Society. There followed stints with Australian
Opera, Sadler's Wells (now the English National Opera), Symphony Nova
Scotia and seven summers with Canada's National Youth Orchestra. He
has recorded for CBC, Philips and BMG/RCA.
Unlike many conductors today, Tintner does not seek the limelight.
"I think the conductor has to do the best he can to express what the
composer intended. I don't think he needs to drive in a Rolls-Royce
or be particularly fashionable."
Nor does Tintner admire the jet-setting lifestyle that has become
the norm for conductors with simultaneous posts in several cities.
"I don't think a conductor should have more than one full-time job
because he can't do his best. This has to do with why I stayed so
long in Halifax and Australia."
His Bruckner cycle is shared by three orchestras (in Ireland, Scotland
and New Zealand), and its sense of continuity is amazing. "I don't
mean to seem arrogant, but every conductor has his own sort of sound
that he takes with himself wherever he goes."
Tintner is booked to conduct in Australia and Japan in the near
future, and hopes to record works by the Viennese late-Romantics
Schmidt and Pfitzner, but engagements are not pouring in. It doesn't
help that he no longer has a podium to trade with visiting conductors.
"So far, the doors haven't opened very quickly. One has to be very
patient. And it's difficult to be patient when you are nearly 82
years old."
Joanne and Phil Stevens,
Ottawa, Canada
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