Hans Richter (conductor)

Hans Richter (János Richter) (4 April 1843 – 5 December 1916) was an Austrian–Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor.

Richter was born in Raab (Hungarian: Győr), Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a good local composer, conductor and regens chori Anton Richter. His mother was opera-singer Jozefa Csazenszky. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory. He had a particular interest in the horn, and developed his conducting career at several different opera houses in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He became associated with Richard Wagner in the 1860s, and in 1876 he was chosen to conduct the first complete performance of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.

In 1877, he assisted the ailing composer as conductor of a major series of Wagner concerts in London, and from then onwards he became a familiar feature of English musical life, appearing at many choral festivals including as principal conductor of the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival (1885–1909) and directing the Hallé Orchestra (1899–1911) and the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra (1904–1911). In Europe his work was chiefly based in Vienna, where (transcending the bitter division between the followers of Wagner and those of Johannes Brahms) he gave much attention to the works of Brahms himself, Anton Bruckner (who once slipped a coin into his hand after a concert by way of a tip) and Antonín Dvořák (he gave the London and Vienna premieres of the Symphonic Variations); he also continued to work at Bayreuth.

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