Wand, Günter

Wand, Günter, eminent German conductor; b. Elberfeld, Jan. 7, 1912. He received training in Wuppertal before going to Cologne, where he was a student at the Univ. and of Philipp Jarnach (composition) and Paul Baumgartner (piano) at the Cons. He pursued training in conducting with Franz von Hoesslin at the Munich Academy of Music. After conducting in Detmold, he conducted at the Cologne Opera from 1939 to 1944. In 1944-45 he conducted the Salzburg Mozarteum Orch. In 1946 he became Generalmusikdirektor of Cologne. He became conductor of the Giirzenich Orch. there in 1947, a position he retained until 1974. During his tenure there, he returned the orch. to its pre- World War II high standard and programmed many classical and contemporary scores previously unperformed by the orch. From 1948 he was also prof, of conducting at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik. In 1951 he made his first appearance in the British capital as a guest conductor with the London Sym. Orch. He also appeared as a guest conductor throughout Europe and in Japan. From 1974 to 1982 he conducted the Bern Sym. Orch. In 1982 he became chief conductor of the North German Radio Sym. Orch. in Hamburg, a position he held with great distinction until his retirement as conductor laureate in 1991. It was during his Hamburg tenure that Wand acquired international renown via a series of notable recordings. On Jan. 19, 1989, he made his belated U.S. debut at the age of 77 as a guest conductor with the Chicago Sym. Orch. In his last years, Wand attained a revered and honored place among the world’s podium figures as one of the last exponents of the hallowed Austro-German art of conducting. His interpretations of such masters as Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and most especially Bruckner, were acclaimed.

Bibliography

F. Berger, G. W.: Gürzenichkapellmeiser 1947-1974 (Cologne, 1974); W. Seifert, G. W.: So und nicht anders: Gedanken und Erinnerungen (Hamburg, 1998).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire