Willem Mengelberg

The Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg was the one who put the Concertgebouw Orchestra on the map. He succeeded Willem Kes as principal conductor in 1895, and extended it to one of the world’s foremost orchestras in the following fifty years. He enriched the orchestral repertoire with the works of Richard Strauss and Mahler, which he befriended and whose many performances of his works developed into a Mahler tradition with the Mahler Festival of 1920 as its culmination.
Mengelberg also introduced the annual performance of the Matthew Passion in the Netherlands, which is typical of his style. He did not hesitate to make changes and cuts to the score if it would aid the clarity of a work. Another striking feature of his style is his preference for rubato to make the music livelier, which was met with both admiration and disapproval.
At the end of the 1920’s, Mengelberg was at the peak of his fame, not only due to his successful performances with the Concertgebouw Orchestra that were made available for a wide audience through the radio, but also because of his international successes as guest director and music director of the New York Philharmonic. However, during the German occupation he fell out of favor, since he continued to conduct in Germany and in the presence of Nazi leaders. After the war, the Netherlands’ Honour Council for Music banned him from conducting for six years as a result of his behavior. He died two months before the expiration of the ban.
It has taken several decades to separate Mengelbergs political ideas from his musical ideas, but eventually he has again become regarded as one of the greatest 20th-century conductors.