Oswald Kabasta

File:Oswald Kabasta (1896–1946).jpg

Oswald Kabasta in 1927

Oswald Kabasta (29 December 1896 – 6 February 1946) was an Austrian conductor and music composer.

Biography

Oswald Kabasta was born at Mistelbach in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kabasta studied conducting at the Vienna Music Academy from 1913 to 1916, with Joseph Marx and the Bruckner disciple Ferdinand Löwe, among others. He also took private lessons with Franz Schmidt. First working as a music teacher, he obtained the position of Kapellmeister in Wiener Neustadt; in 1923 he became conductor of the Baden 1862 Choral Society in Baden bei Wien.

After two years of successful directorship in the municipal orchestra in Graz, he was appointed Municipal General Music Director in Graz in 1928. In 1931 Kabasta became concert and music director of Radio Verkehrs AG (RAVAG) and led its orchestra; in 1931 he also took over the conducting class at the Vienna Music Academy from Franz Schalk, the other important Bruckner disciple. In May 1932, a plan (not realised) was made by the Minister of Education, Anton Rintelen, and his circle to recruit Kabasta for a permanent engagement, beginning in September 1932, at the Vienna Opera Theatre, whose relations with RAVAG suffered from "numerous inhibitions and disagreements."

Kabasta's successful career led to numerous concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic and in 1934, as successor to Ferdinand Löwe, to his appointment as chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. He reshaped the orchestra and took it on tours to Italy and England. His influence lasted long after his death; even in the 1970s, orchestra musicians referred to him: "Under Kabasta we played it quite differently". In 1938, Kabasta claimed to the NSDAP that he had not accepted "a single Jew" during his time with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Before 1938, however, the partisan press had attacked Kabasta for his employment of Jewish musicians and conductors in the RAVAG, for example Fred Fobau. In 1938 he became chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, succeeding the well-known Bruckner interpreter Siegmund von Hausegger. Although Kabasta was a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party after the annexation of Austria, he nevertheless included works by Paul Dukas, Gustav Mahler, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Béla Bartók on his programmes, which were undesirable in Munich. His close collaboration with the orchestra, with which he undertook numerous tours during the Second World War, ended in August 1944. The Munich Tonhalle, the venue since 1895, was destroyed by the air raids on Munich. In the final phase of World War II, he was placed on the God-gifted list in August 1944, which saved him from wartime service, even on the home front.

After the war, the occupying military power forbade Kabasta to continue working as a conductor. He was accused of joining the NSDAP as early as 1932. Hans Rosbaud took over the direction of the Munich Philharmonic. Kabasta collapsed as a result of this professional ban (the city of Munich had stopped paying Kabasta in October 1945 at the behest of the Information Control Division and dismissed him without notice). He took his own life with an overdose of sleeping pills.

A partial collection of his estate is kept at the Bavarian State Library (music department, manuscripts).

Works

Appraisal

With Kabasta's suicide, the music world lost an important conductor who would undoubtedly have been allowed to perform again and would certainly have had a place among the great musicians of the time, not least because of his commitment to performances in the original version. He was also particularly committed to the work of Johann Nepomuk David and his teacher Franz Schmidt; the premiere of the oratorio The Book with Seven Seals, scheduled for 13 March 1938, had to be postponed until June 1938 because of the annexation of Austria. Kabasta also took over the direction of the first performance of Schmidt's cantata Deutsche Auferstehung. Ein festliches Lied in April 1940.

Kabasta was a conductor who created enormous musical tension through fast but also very variable tempi (like many other conductors of the time, especially Wilhelm Furtwängler), but who nevertheless (due to his Austrian origins) did not neglect charm and a sense of sound. His 1944 recording of Dvořák's much-played New World Symphony, produced for radio, was thought to be one by Furtwängler until 1990. It is in fact the wildest interpretation of this work ever. Other significant recordings exist of Beethoven's Eroica and Bruckner's 4th Symphony, plus studio and radio recordings of Bruckner's 7th and 9th, Schubert's 3rd, 4th and 5th, Beethoven's 8th and Mozart's Jupiter Symphony.

Notable premieres

• Franz Schmidt, The Book with Seven Seals, Vienna Symphony, Vienna, 15 June 1938.

References

• "Kabasta, Oswald". In: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). 3. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1965), p. 162.
• Wilhelm Zentner, "Kabasta, Oswald". In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). 10. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot (1974), p. 715.
• Elisabeth Th. Hilscher, "Kabasta, Oswald". In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon. Wien: Online-Ausgabe (2002).
• Paolo Isotta, "Oswald Kabasta – Ein Dirigent, verschüttet von den Trümmern des Dritten Reiches". In: Gabriele E. Meyer, ed., 100 Jahre Münchner Philharmoniker. Jahrbuch der Münchner Philharmoniker, 1993/94. München: Knürr (1994), pp. 138–43.
• Engelbert M. Exl & Michael Nagy, eds., „… mögen sie meiner still gedenken.“ Die Beiträge zum Oswald Kabasta-Symposion in Mistelbach vom 23. bis 25. September 1994. Wien: Verlag Vom Pasqualatihaus (1995).
• Fred K. Prieberg, Handbuch Deutsche Musiker 1933–1945. Kiel (2009), pp. 3756–61 (CD-ROM-Lexikon).
• Ernst Klee, Das Kulturlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer (2007), p. 290.

External links

• Oswald Kabasta at AllMusic
• Oswald Kabasta Discography
• Oswald Kabasta biography