Hugo Philipp Balzer (17 April 1894 – 3 April 1985) was a German
conductor.
Life
Born in
Meiderich
Meiderich is a quarter of the city of Duisburg. It is divided into Unter-, Mittel- and Obermeiderich.
Meiderich belongs to the city district Meiderich/Beeck, which started in 1975, during the course of municipal reorganization. On 31 December 2004, ...
, Balzer studied at the
conservatories in Duisburg and Cologne. He initially worked as a conductor in Koblenz and Essen. In 1929 he went to Freiburg im Breisgau as
Generalmusikdirektor
A music(al) director or director of music is the person responsible for the musical aspects of a performance, production, or organization. This would include the artistic director and usually chief conductor of an orchestra or concert band, the d ...
and in 1933 to Düsseldorf in the same position.
In 1934 he was involved in the foundation and in January 1935 in the ceremonial opening of the
Robert Schumann Conservatory.
[Yvonne Wasserloos, 2010.] In 1939 he was appointed professor at this institution;
In addition he was given the direction of the teaching institution. From 1946 Balzer was a guest conductor in opera and concerts, mainly in
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
-speaking countries (Spain, Italy, Brazil), where he reactivated earlier contacts.
During his time in Düsseldorf he led several world premieres of operas such as Gerster's ' and ''Die Hexe von Passau''.
Assessment
Balzer had to organize the
Reichsmusiktage
The Reich Music Days (German: ''Reichsmusiktage''} took place from 22 to 29 May 1938 in Düsseldorf. They were a Nazi propaganda event under the patronage of Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels had originally planned an annual return of the Reichsmusiktage ...
for the
National Socialists
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
. They tried to develop Düsseldorf into their music capital, which was not realized. Balzer was able to make musical life in Düsseldorf largely neutral, although he could not prevent the ''
Degenerate music
Degenerate music (german: Entartete Musik, link=no, ) was a label applied in the 1930s by the government of Nazi Germany to certain forms of music that it considered harmful or decadent. The Nazi government's concerns about degenerate music were a ...
'' exhibition. As director of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, "Balzer pursued an opportunistic programme policy, and the orchestra was the central orchestral body at the Reichmusiktage 1938 and 1939."
Helmut Kirchmeyer
Helmut Franz Maria Kirchmeyer (born 30 June 1930 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a German musicologist, philologist, and historian.
Career
After grammar school he studied musicology, German literature and philosophy at the University of Cologne, whe ...
, one of Balzer's successors as director of the Düsseldorf Music Academy, "recognizes Balzer as a person who tries in every conceivable way to survive the political reality of a blood dictatorship as unscathed as possible, to get past his own time and to do good within the scope of his possibilities".
[ From a review of the work of Helmut Kirchmeyer on Hugo Balzer.]
Further reading
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References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Balzer, Hugo
1894 births
1985 deaths
People from Duisburg
German conductors (music)