By Jacob Stockinger
I especially loved his Schumann symphonies. (The first movement from Robert Schumann‘s Symphony No. 4 in D minor is in a YouTube video at bottom, with Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting the Dresden State Orchestra.)
The German conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch always exuded a sense of proportion and rightness in the music he conducted. (Below is a photo from his younger years):
He was not a flashy maestro, but one who let the music do the talking and feeling for him.
And now Wolfgang Sawallisch (below) has died at 89 in his native Germany after a globe-spanning career that include major stops in the U.S., Japan and Great Britain as well as Europe.
Here is a link to an obituary in the Australian arts magazine Limelight, which is well worth following:
(Below is another photo of him conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in a photo by Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times.)
And here is the obituary from the Associated Press:
And here is a long obituary-appreciation from The New York Times written by critic and blogger Anne Midgette (is she back at the Times from The Washington Post?)”
Finally, here is a noteworthy remembrance by the famed British critic Norman Lebrecht:
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