Out of Time: The Vexed Life of Georg Tintner

Out of Time: The Vexed Life of Georg Tintner

In Out of Time: The Vexed Life of Georg Tintner, Tanya Buchdahl Tintner, Georg's widow and third wife explores with both tenderness and a clear eye the privations that her husband, a true vessel for art, had to confront to survive in the modern world.

Conductor composer Georg Tintner is best known for his stunning interpretations of Bruckner's symphonies, recorded in the 1990s. A man who lived and breathed music, his long and eventful career began at the age of eight, when he was the first Jew to join the Vienna Boys Choir. In this most musical of cities, Tintner was part of the same audience as Alban Berg, Schoenberg and Webern, and often saw the likes of Furtwängler, Toscanini and Klemperer at work.

Due to the persecution of Jews, Tintner moved out of Vienna in 1938, arriving in Auckland, NZ in 1940. He conducted a church choir until after the war, when he took over the Auckland ChoralSociety in 1947, and the Auckland String Players in 1948.

In 1954, he came to Australia and became conductor of the National Opera of Australia (a private company) before joining the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera in 1957. Tintner is credited with pioneering televised opera in Australia. After a short stint in South Africa he became Music Director of the West Australian Opera. In 1974, he rejoined the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera, by then known as the Australian Opera. He became Music Director of the Queensland Theatre Orchestra in 1976.

In 1987 he moved to Canada, where he became director of Symphony Nova Scotia. In 1998, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. On 2 October 1999, at 82, after a six-year struggle with cancer, he jumped to his death from the balcony of his 11th-storey Halifax apartment.

Tanya Buchdahl Tintner, Georg's third wife and widow, writes freelance articles and classical music reviews. In addition, she has run a professional development program for orchestra conductors for almost twenty years, and served as concerts officer at the Queensland Conservatorium. She divides her time between Canada, Australia and Europe.

Out of Time: The Vexed Life of Georg Tintner
UWA Publishing
Author: Tanya Buchdahl Tintner
ISBN: 9781742582566
Price: $39.95