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Music Individual Composer & Musician

Out of Time

The Vexed Life of Georg Tintner

by (author) Tanya Buchdahl Tintner

Publisher
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2014
Category
Individual Composer & Musician, Composers & Musicians, Popular Culture
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781554589432
    Publish Date
    Jan 2014
    List Price
    $27.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781554589388
    Publish Date
    Jan 2013
    List Price
    $41.99

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Description

Georg Tintner is best known to music lovers for his stunning interpretations of Bruckner’s symphonies he recorded on Naxos in the 1990s.

The first Jewish member of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, a composer at six, and a conductor at nineteen, Georg Tintner was one of the bright young musicians in Vienna, notwithstanding the city’s pervasive anti-Semitism. But the Anschluss in 1938 changed everything. He fled the Nazis and eventually arrived as a refugee in New Zealand, where the cultural and artistic contrast could not have been greater. In time he moved on to conduct opera in Australia but struggled to make a living. He tried to restart his career in South Africa and England, but real success came only after he moved to Canada at the age of seventy. Worldwide acclaim greeted his Naxos recordings of Bruckner’s symphonies, but it was too late. Suffering from cancer and unwilling to “crumble away,” he took his own life.

Georg Tintner’s story is the tragedy of the refugee and the culturally alienated artist. Socialist, vegetarian, and bicycle enthusiast, he was a man of principle, unwilling to compromise on musical and ethical matters no matter the cost. Tanya Buchdahl Tintner has written a thoroughly researched memoir of an artist who was like no other.

About the author

Tanya Buchdahl Tintner, Georg’s third wife and widow, is a freelance classical music writer and editor. She has managed a professional development program for conductors for over twenty years and served as concerts officer at the Queensland Conservatorium. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Tanya Buchdahl Tintner's profile page