Keilberth birth centennial
Now Playing: 19 APRIL 1908
Topic: 2008 Anniversaries
19 April 1908, Birth of German conductor Joseph KEILBERTH in Karlsruhe. d-Munich, 20 JUL 1968, while conducting a performance of Tristan und Isolde, at the National Theater Munich. He started his career in the State Theatre of his native city, Karlsruhe. In 1940 he became director of the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague. Near the end of World War II he became principal conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle. In 1949 he became chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, formed mainly of Germans expelled from post-war Czechoslovakia under the Beneš decrees. He died in Munich in 1968 after collapsing while conducting Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde in exactly the same place as Felix Mottl had done in 1911. Keilberth conducted the first stereo recording of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle in 1955.

SHOP Joseph KEILBERTH