Klaus Tennstedt

Among the 20th century’s most influential conductors ranked Germany’s Klaus Tennstedt, whose deeply felt accounts of Mahler and further Austrian and German masters earned widespread admiration.

Tennstedt entered the world in 1926 and received his first musical guidance through violin lessons given by his father, Hermann Tennstedt. He later enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory, where he pursued studies in violin, piano, and conducting. To escape military service under the Nazi regime during World War II, he joined a Baroque orchestra. In 1948 the Halle Stadttheater named him concertmaster, yet an injury or growth on his left hand soon compelled him to abandon the violin. Remaining in Halle, he first served as vocal coach and accompanist before turning to the podium; his conducting debut occurred in 1952. Between 1954 and 1971 he led opera companies almost exclusively, beginning with the Chemnitz Opera from 1954 to 1957, continuing at the Dresden Opera from 1958 to 1962, and concluding at the Schwerin State Theater through 1971.

By that time Tennstedt recognized that his lack of membership in East Germany’s dominant political party barred him from more challenging posts. A 1971 concert in Sweden supplied the occasion for his defection from that restrictive environment. He stayed in Sweden, working at the Göteborg Theater and with the Swedish RSO. The next year he moved to Kiel in northern Germany to become music director of the Kiel Opera, a post he retained until 1976. In 1974 Walter Homburger engaged Tennstedt to lead Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The performance drew an outpouring of enthusiastic notices, which prompted an invitation to conduct Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That appearance marked an explosive shift in his career, drawing offers from nearly every leading orchestra in the United States and Europe.

Subsequent engagements took him to New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. His British debut arrived in 1976 with the London Symphony Orchestra and generated further demand and praise. In 1978 he became the first German to direct the Israel Philharmonic. The following season he assumed the principal conductorship of the NDR Symphony Orchestra while also serving as principal guest conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra. From 1980 onward he held the same guest position with the London Philharmonic; by 1983 he had advanced to music director, guiding major tours and recordings until health concerns forced his resignation in 1987. He nevertheless maintained ties with the LPO on a reduced basis as conductor laureate until his retirement in 1994. The Mahler Symphonies he recorded with the LPO during those years constitute a lasting legacy that reveals his mature and refined interpretive approach.