Hans Rosbaud

Hans Rosbaud (Johann Rosbaud) was an Austrian conductor born in Graz in 1895 and who died in Lugano in 1962. His career, which unfolded mostly in Germany, France and Switzerland, is associated with the championing of modern music, although his repertoire was far broader than that label suggests.

He trained at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where he studied piano with Alfred Hoehn and composition with Bernhard Sekles. In 1921 he was appointed director of the Municipal School of Music in Mainz, where he also conducted some concerts with the municipal orchestra. An early milestone was his 1923 performance of Hindemith's Kammermusik No. 1. In 1929 he took over the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, where his performances attracted attention. Until the Nazis came to power in January 1933, he regularly programmed works by Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Hindemith, Stravinsky and Bartók, and premiered Schoenberg's Begleitmusik and Bartók's Second Piano Concerto, with the composer himself as soloist.

In 1937 he left Frankfurt after failing to secure a post in the United States and accepted the position of Generalmusikdirektor in Münster; four years later he received the same title in Strasbourg. After the war, in 1945, the American military authorities appointed him Generalmusikdirektor of Munich, and in 1948 he took charge of the orchestra of the newly founded Southwest German Radio (SWF) in Baden-Baden, a post he held until his death. In 1954 he conducted the concert premiere of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, and in 1957 the staged premiere in Zurich.

His legacy rests on landmark performances of the Second Viennese School and of composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen, but also on his work with Mozart at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, at the Zurich Tonhalle, and on his recordings, which range from Gluck and Haydn to Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius and Stravinsky. He is remembered for clarity, precision and fidelity to the score.