Death of the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on Saturday. He began his career as an innovator in the art of interpretation with a Monteverdi renaissance at the Zurich Opera House.
Born in Berlin, the Austrian conductor spent his childhood and youth in Graz. After training at the Vienna Academy of Music, he became a cellist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in 1952. A year later, together with his wife Alice, he founded the Concentus Musicus Wien in order to provide a forum for his increasingly intensive work with original instruments and the musical performance practice of Renaissance and Baroque music.
In 1971, he realized a cycle of Monteverdi's music theatre works at the Zurich Opera House with director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, which became a milestone in historically informed music-making. This was followed by an equally exemplary and pioneering cycle of Mozart operas at the same opera house with Ponnelle as his partner.
However, his work was not limited to baroque and classical music. In 2009, Harnoncourt also realized a Porgy and Bess production, for example, and in 2011 he conducted Smetana's "Bartered Bride" in Graz. In 2013, he also took up the cudgels for Jacques Offenbach. In December 2015, he informed his audience in a handwritten open letter that he would be retiring from the stage with immediate effect.
Photo: © Werner Kmetitsch, www.styriarte.com
