Frieder Weissmann/Berlin State Opera House Orch – Symphony No. 1 in C minor (Beethoven) (1925)

Frieder Weissmann conducts the Berlin State Opera Orchestra in Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 1 in C,’ Op. 21, recorded in Berlin on 11 February 1925.

The movements are:

00:00 1st movement
07:47 2nd movement
15:08 3rd movement
18:45 4th movement

From Wikipedia: Frieder Weissmann (23 January 1893 – 4 January 1984) was a German conductor and composer.

Weissmann was born in Langen, Hesse. His civil name was Samuel, which he kept – in the form Semy or Semmy – until 1916. After that, he preferred the first name Friedrich or Frieder in combination with Samuel, which was soon shortened to S. before disappearing altogether…

Weissmann grew up in Frankfurt, where his father Ignatz Isidor Weissmann (1863-1939) was Hazzan of the Hauptsynagoge from 1894 to 1937. After graduating from the Goethe Grammar School, he studied law in Heidelberg for one semester in 1911, then philosophy, art history and music history at the Munich University until 1914. In Heidelberg, he received composition lessons from Philipp Wolfrum, in Munich from Walter Braunfels. At the outbreak of the First World War, he took the first step towards a conducting career and became répétiteur under Ludwig Rottenberg at the Frankfurt Opera (1914/16). In 1916/17, he was engaged as second Kapellmeister at the Stadttheater Stettin. From 1917 to 1921, he worked as a freelance concert kapellmeister and répétiteur in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. In all three cities he also appeared as a composer.

In 1920, he was awarded a doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy at Munich University with a dissertation on the composer Georg Abraham Schneider (1770-1839). This was followed in 1921 by an engagement as répétiteur and conductor at the Berlin State Opera, where he worked under Max von Schillings and Erich Kleiber until 1924. At the same time, Weissmann started a years-long close collaboration with the Berlin record company Carl Lindström AG, for whose Parlophon and Odeon brands he musically directed some 2,000 recordings until 1933. In 1924, he moved to the opera house of Münster as first Kapellmeister (1924/25), then in the same capacity to the opera house in Königsberg (1926/27). From 1926 to 1932, he was permanent guest conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic. From 1930 onwards, there was increased collaboration with radio orchestras in Stuttgart and Hamburg. In 1931, alongside Ernst Kunwald, he became conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the former Blüthner Orchestra, which had merged with the Berlin Philharmonic in autumn 1932…

In 1929, he married his long-time fiancée, the German soprano Meta Seinemeyer, who, seriously ill with leukaemia, died a few hours after the wedding ceremony…

As an artist of Jewish descent, Weissmann also saw his existence directly threatened by the Nazi Machtergreifung in 1933. He left Germany in June 1933 for the Netherlands, where he performed with the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam and the Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep orchestra. This was followed by six-month stays – alternating with the Netherlands – in Argentina from 1934 to 1937, where he gave concerts in Buenos Aires Radio Splendid and at the Teatro Colón. It was also in Buenos Aires that Weissmann, who had acquired Argentinian citizenship in 1935, married his second wife Rosita Chevallier-Boutell in 1937.

After making his U.S. debut in late 1937 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, he moved his primary residence to New York in 1938, where he caused a stir in the summer of 1939 with a series of open-air concerts with the New York Philharmonic at the Lewisohn Stadium… From 1939 to 1947, Weissmann, who became an American citizen in 1944, conducted the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and from 1942 to 1958, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Scranton, Pennsylvania…In parallel to his permanent engagements, Weissmann was very active as a guest conductor in the US, Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver), Mexico and the Netherlands from 1945 onwards. After 1954, he concentrated on Europe…

Weissmann was a central figure in the German recording industry between 1921 and 1933. He was Lindström’s trusted house conductor. He usually conducted the orchestra of the Berlin State Opera, the Staatskapelle Berlin, or an ad hoc orchestra consisting of members of this orchestra…His repertoire was extremely broad and included operetta and light classical music as well as the major works of symphonic literature. Under his direction, numerous first recordings were made, e.g. the first complete recording of all Beethoven’s symphonies in 1924/25…

Weissmann died on 4 January 1984 in Amsterdam at the age of 90 and was buried two days later at Zorgvlied Cemetery alongside Dutch painter Carel Willink, the husband of Weissmann’s friend Sylvia Willink, who had died a few months earlier.

I transferred this symphony from English Parlophone E 10311/3. The pressings have a few areas of damage, the effects of which I have attempted to mitigate.

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