Walter Johannes Damrosch (January 30, 1862, Breslau, Prussia; died December 22, 1950, New York City) was an American symphony conductor.
Biography
A son of the conductor Leopold Damrosch, Walter Damrosch exhibited an interest in music at an early age and was instructed by his father in harmony and also studied under Wilhelm Albert Rischbieter and Felix Draeseke at the Dresden Conservatory. He emigrated with his parents in 1871 to the United States and in 1884, when his father began his season of German Opera in New York, Walter was made an assistant conductor. After his father's death in 1885, he held the same post under Anton Seidl and also became conductor of the Oratorio and Symphony Societies in New York.
Damrosch was best known as a conductor of Richard Wagner and was also a pioneer in the performance of music on the radio, and as such became one of the chief popularizers of classical music in the United States. Although now remembered almost exclusively as a conductor, before his radio broadcasts he was equally well-known as a composer. The 1911 Britannica stated:
- Damrosch... the eminent conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra, and of various operatic undertakings, has established his position as an original and poetic composer, not only by his opera, The Scarlet Letter, but by such songs as the intensely dramatic Danny Deever.
A dinner menu from 1893 containing Walter Damrosch's signature.
Damrosch went on to compose operas based on stories such as The Scarlet Letter (1896), Cyrano de Bergerac (1913), and The Man Without a Country (1937). Those operas are very seldom performed now. His Wagner recordings are still widely available.
Damrosch was the National Broadcasting Company's music director under David Sarnoff, and from 1928 to 1942, he hosted the network's Music Appreciation Hour, a popular series of radio lectures on classic music aimed at students. (The show was broadcast during school hours, and teachers were provided textbooks and worksheets by the network.) One of the few recordings Damrosch made was of the complete ballet music from the opera King Henry VIII by Camile Saint-Saens, with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., for RCA Victor.
Broadway
References
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