Soprano Edith Mathis has had one of the leading international vocal careers of the twentieth century and was particularly well known for her Mozart and Strauss roles. She studied at the Lucerne Conservatory and made her stage debut there as the Second Boy in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. After singing in Zürich, she joined the Cologne Opera in 1959. Remaining with the company until 1963, she began singing the major repertory roles. She also made guest appearance during these years at the Hamburg State Opera, Glyndebourne (where she first appeared in 1962 singing Cherubino in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro), and the Salzburg Festival opera.

In 1963, she joined the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. Her Covent Garden debut was in 1970, as Susanna. She went on to sing in the major opera houses of the world, including the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Opéra de Paris. She sang regularly at the Salzburg and Munich Festivals.

Among her other roles were Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Marzelline in Fidelio, and Mélisande in Debussy's Pélleas et Mélisande, and Pamina in the Magic Flute. She was considered outstanding in the role of Sophie in Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. As the list of roles indicates, she had a bright voice suggesting youth and freshness, and she was regarded an excellent actress. Other roles with which she was particularly associated include the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Agathe in Der Freischütz.

Mathis is also a highly regarded oratorio and recital singer, known for direct, simple expression of the classic lieder repertory, and is also highly regarded as a Bach singer, as well as singing the oratorios of Joseph Haydn and numerous works of Mozart and Handel.

She has made many recordings and received numerous recording prizes, including the Prix Mondial du Disque. Other honors include the Hans-Reinhard-Ring from the Swiss Society for Theater, the Arts Prize of the city of Lucerne, the Buxtehude Prize from the Senate of Lübeck, and the Mozart Medal of the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 1979 the Bavarian government declared her a Bayerische Kammersangerin.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was not only one of the greatest composers of the Classical period, but one of the greatest of all time. Surprisingly, he is not identified with radical formal or harmonic innovations, or with the profound kind of symbolism heard in some of Bach's works. Mozart's best music has a natural flow and irresistible charm, and can express humor, joy or sorrow with both conviction and mastery. His operas, especially his later efforts, are brilliant examples of high art, as are many of his piano concertos and later symphonies. Even his lesser compositions and juvenile works feature much attractive and often masterful music.

Mozart was the last of seven children, of whom five did not survive early childhood. By the age of three he was playing the clavichord, and at four he began writing short compositions. Young Wolfgang gave his first public performance at the age of five at Salzburg University, and in January 1762, he performed on harpsichord for the Elector of Bavaria. There are many astonishing accounts of the young Mozart's precocity and genius. At the age of seven, for instance, he picked up a violin at a musical gathering and sight-read the second part of a work with complete accuracy, despite his never having had a violin lesson.

In the years 1763-1766, Mozart, along with his father Leopold, a composer and musician, and sister Nannerl, also a musically talented child, toured London, Paris, and other parts of Europe, giving many successful concerts and performing before royalty. The Mozart family returned to Salzburg in November 1766. The following year young Wolfgang composed his first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus. Keyboard concertos and other major works also came from his pen.

In 1769, Mozart was appointed Konzertmeister at the Salzburg Court by the Archbishop. Beginning that same year, the Mozarts made three tours of Italy, where the young composer studied Italian opera and produced two successful efforts, Mitridate and Lucio Silla. In 1773, Mozart was back in Austria, where he spent most of the next few years composing. He wrote all his violin concertos between 1774 and 1777, as well as Masses, symphonies, and chamber works.

In 1780, Mozart wrote his opera Idomeneo, which became a sensation in Munich. After a conflict with the Archbishop, Mozart left his Konzertmeister post and settled in Vienna. He received a number of commissions and took on a well-paying but unimportant Court post. In 1782 Mozart married Constanze Weber and took her to Salzburg the following year to introduce her to his family. 1782 was also the year that saw his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail staged with great success.

In 1784, Mozart joined the Freemasons, apparently embracing the teachings of that group. He would later write music for certain Masonic lodges. In the early and mid-1780s, Mozart composed many sonatas and quartets, and often appeared as soloist in the 15 piano concertos he wrote during this period. Many of his commissions were for operas now, and Mozart met them with a string of masterpieces. Le nozze di Figaro came 1786, Don Giovanni in 1787, Così fan tutte in 1790, and Die Zauberflöte in 1791. Mozart made a number of trips in his last years, and while his health had been fragile in previous times, he displayed no serious condition or illness until he developed a fever of unknown origin near the end of 1791. ~ Robert Cummings

Julia Hamari is one of the leading oratorio and Lieder performers of her generation, known for her musicality and rich, full tone. She is particularly admired for her Bach performances and has taken the alto part in almost 30 of Rilling's recordings of the complete Bach cantata. She first studied voice with Fatime Martins and Jeno Sipos, continuing her studies at the Budapest Academy of Music. In 1954, she won the Erkel competition and studied for several years at the Stuttgart Hochschule für Musik. Her concert debut was in 1966 as the alto soloist in Bach's St. Matthew Passion in a Vienna performance. That launched her concert and Lieder career, which has taken place largely in Europe, though she made her United States debut in 1967 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She also made her opera debut the same year as Mercedes in Bizet's Carmen and since then has appeared, primarily with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, in various Baroque and Classical operas. In 1989, she returned to Stuttgart as a professor.

Powerful of voice, though without the deep, cutting tone of some of his predecessors, bass Karl Ridderbusch nevertheless made a strong impression in the great Wagner bass roles. His plush instrument boasted thrusting top notes during the years of his considerable prime and possessed sufficient size to dominate a large orchestra. In addition, its fine focus made him a splendid singer of Bach, as was evidenced by his beautifully sung Christus in the composer's St. Matthew Passion. Originally trained in engineering, Ridderbusch turned to singing when he won an amateur competition and was noticed by German tenor and TV personality Rudolf Schock. Schock was sufficiently impressed to help underwrite a program of studies at Essen's Folkwangschule. Ridderbusch made his stage debut at Münster's Städtisches Theater in 1961 and shortly thereafter accepted a contract at Essen where he began to undertake the Wagner, Verdi, and Strauss roles that would form the core of his subsequent repertory. In 1965, he joined the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. In 1966, he made his American debut singing Sarastro with Lyric Opera of Chicago and in 1967, he first appeared at Bayreuth. Ridderbusch made his first Metropolitan Opera appearances in 1967 and sang in an impressive Ring cycle at Covent Garden in 1971. His Hagen, somewhat heartier than most, was nonetheless a dangerous personality and was vigorously sung. Meanwhile, he had begun a long-term relationship with the Wiener Staatsoper and was frequently heard in Munich as well. Soon, he came into conductor Herbert von Karajan's circle of preferred singers and became a regular at the Salzburg Easter Festivals and in the conductor's related recording projects. During the period in which he was Karajan's leading bass of preference, Ridderbusch recorded such roles as Pogner in Die Meistersinger, Marke in Tristan und Isolde, Heinrich in Lohengrin, Hagen in Die Götterdämmerung, and Rocco in Fidelio. Nor was he unaccustomed to recording with others. Daland and Falstaff in Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor were sturdy interpretations sung under the direction of other leading conductors. Given his facility in the top register, Ridderbusch moved to undertake Hans Sachs and quickly became one of the role's leading proponents. His Sachs in the Chicago Lyric Opera's 1977 production of Die Meistersinger was, if somewhat bluff, richly and warmly sung.

Since its inception in 1842, the Wiener Philharmoniker (or Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in English) has represented the best in the Central European orchestral tradition. Before the Wiener Philharmoniker was founded, there was no permanent, professional orchestra to be found outside the opera halls in the city of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. The Wiener Philharmoniker is one of the most traditional orchestras in the world today, with much-beloved traditions, like the annual New Year's concerts of waltzes by the Strauss family.

In 1833, Franz Lachner, conductor at the Hofoper, had formed a musicians' association from the ranks of the opera orchestras to play symphonic music, but this was a temporary endeavor. Nine years later, a group of music critics and other interested parties persuaded Otto Nicolai, principal conductor of the Kärntertortheater, to conduct the first Wiener Philharmoniker concert at the Grosser Redoutensaal (Great Ballroom) on March 28, 1842. The group was founded as the first completely self-governing orchestra, and it has remained so ever since. Although concerts were irregular until 1860, the orchestra quickly built up a reputation. From 1860 to 1875, Otto Dessoff was the permanent conductor, bringing the music of Brahms, Wagner, and Liszt into the concert halls. Hans Richter succeeded Dessoff and conducted the orchestra until 1898, introducing Bruckner and Dvorák to Viennese audiences. Both of these conductors played major roles in establishing the Wiener Philharmoniker as one of the finest orchestras in the world. During this time, the Wiener Philharmoniker had numerous premieres of now-classic works such as Brahms' Second Symphony and Bruckner's Eighth; sometimes, as in the case of Bruckner's Third, the premiere was conducted by the composer himself. The great Gustav Mahler conducted from 1898 to 1901, but his tenure was marked by dissension within the orchestra.

The longest-term conductor of the post-Mahler era was Felix Weingartner, from 1908 to 1927. He was beloved by the orchestra for his measured, classical style and, in particular, for his Beethoven interpretations. From 1933 to 1938, the revered conductors Bruno Walter and Wilhelm Furtwängler shared the subscription concerts; after Hitler's annexation of Austria in 1938, the Nazi Party dissolved the orchestra, but the decision was reversed after Furtwängler intervened. The Wiener Philharmoniker led an uneasy life during the war but afterward reclaimed its place in the world's orchestral pantheon. The list of conductors who have led Wiener Philharmoniker subscription concerts reads like an honor roll of maestros; Richard Strauss, Arturo Toscanini, Herbert von Karajan, and Leonard Bernstein have each taken turns at the podium.

The Wiener Philharmoniker has held an annual New Year's Day Concert of Strauss family works, particularly those of Johann II, since 1941 when Clemens Krauss began the tradition; the first of these concerts was actually held on New Year's Eve in 1939, after which the concert has occurred on New Year's Day. Riccardo Muti led the orchestra in its 80th New Year's concert in 2021, marking his sixth appearance in the series. While some of its traditions are revered, others have come under fire in recent years. Though the Wiener Philharmoniker premiered a lot of music in its early days, it now prefers to play mostly music written before 1900, which created a controversy at the Salzburg Festival during the 1990s. The orchestra also refused until 1997 to accept a female musician as a full member, threatening to disband rather than cave in to political pressure. The first woman member of the Wiener Philharmoniker was harpist Anna Lelkes, who was granted full membership after 26 years of service. Simone Young was the first woman to conduct the Wiener Philharmoniker in 2005, and in 2008, Albena Danailova became the orchestra's first female concertmaster. Historically, the Wiener Philharmoniker has opposed hiring musicians who are not Central European in order to preserve what is perceived as a unique quality of sound. While the orchestra's policies may be controversial, it cannot be disputed that the Wiener Philharmoniker is one of the world's finest orchestras, performing with exceptional finesse and clarity, with a beautifully blended woodwind and brass sound that meshes perfectly with its subtle, lush strings.

The Wiener Philharmoniker is celebrated on 24-carat gold bullion coins issued by the Austrian Mint. In 2006, the design of the coinage was featured by Austrian Airlines on its airplanes to promote both the orchestra and the sale of the coins, which are among the most popular with investors. ~ Andrew Lindemann Malone

One of the most acclaimed operatic and orchestral conductors of his generation, Karl Bohm was one of the most influential musicians and recording artists in the postwar classical world. As a specialist in Mozart, Wagner, and Strauss, he had few peers and his expertise extended to the music of Haydn on one end and Schoenberg and Berg on the other.

Bohm was born in Graz, Austria, of German-Bohemian descent (the name "Bohm" literally translates as "Bohemian") on his father's side and French-Alsatian background on his mother's side. He was the son of Leopold Bohm, an attorney, and the nephew of Austria's former Minister of War, General Stoger-Steiner. Bohm earned a law degree in deference to his father's wishes, but his real interest lay in music -- he studied privately in Graz and later in Vienna, and by 1915 was coaching singers at the Graz Opera, even as he worked toward a career in law. He made his debut as a conductor at Graz in 1917, with Viktor Nessler's forgotten opera Der Trompeter von Sackingen, a work that Bohm later described as "something for the tastes of a provincial choral society." In 1919 he received his doctorate in law, but Bohm had already begun a serious career in music.

Bohm's first great triumph came soon after, with the Graz production of Wagner's Lohengrin, for which he added extra singers from the city's choral society, and then spent months rehearsing every part in painstaking detail, even singing each part himself with the vocalists -- although he wore out his own health with this effort, the resulting performances were an artistic and critical triumph that had far-reaching consequences for Bohm. Among those in attendance at the performance was Karl Muck, one of the leading conductors of the day, famed at the time for his work at Bayreuth as well as with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Muck offered to train Bohm further in Wagner's music, and the younger man spent his apprenticeship with Muck working on the Ring cycle, Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, and Meistersinger. It was with this groundwork that Bohm was prepared to work on a new production of Tristan, which became one of the works for which Bohm was most famous.

In 1921, Bohm was solidly entrenched in Graz when he was offered the chance to join the Munich State Opera as an assistant to Bruno Walter, the leading light among the younger generation of conductors. The circumstances of his audition were most unusual -- he was allowed the chance to conduct Weber's Der Freischutz with only a single hour's rehearsal for the orchestra, which allowed him to work on only one of the opera's three acts. He chose the third act, and in one scene noted the absence of clarinets, over the passage where the Hermit enters. The musicians insisted there was no clarinet part, and Bohm ordered the score out of archives -- he found the clarinet part, obscured under the stains from oil lamps, and received the congratulations of Walter and the job as his assistant. Bohm later described this seeming reduction in rank, to assistant conductor of a first-rate opera company, as a vital element in his education. He spent six years in Munich working under Walter, conducting 528 performances of 73 different operas, a unique and priceless learning experience.

The most important part of this experience lay with Mozart's and Wagner's operas. In 1927, Bohm accepted an appointment as music director at Darmstadt, where he gained further experience conducting modern operatic works, including Berg's Wozzeck.

Fate played a hand in 1930 when Bohm conducted Beethoven's Fidelio in Darmstadt as part of a celebration of the 150th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. The Ninth Symphony had received a lackluster performance under another conductor; when Bohm's performance of the opera rescued the festivities, with one critic writing "That was the Beethoven celebration. That was the Beethoven celebration." Fidelio was to remain at the core of his repertory over the next 50 years.

In 1931, Bohm moved on to the same position at the Hamburg Opera, and in 1933, he met Richard Strauss for the first time, when the composer came to Hamburg to help in the preparation of the premiere of his opera Arabella. Bohm's contact with Strauss was a pivotal moment in his career on several levels, leading not only to a close relationship between the two for the next 16 years, but to a much deeper understanding of Mozart's operas, growing out of Strauss' devotion to Mozart. Bohm also became an increasingly familiar figure at the podium in the concert hall, and made his debut with the Vienna Symphony in the early '30s. His first chance to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic came in April of 1933 when the orchestra's music director, Clemens Krauss, resigned and Bohm stepped into the breach for a concert. It marked the beginning of a long, productive relationship with the orchestra.

Bohm faced his first career setback in 1933 following the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. He was called to the office of an attorney in Hamburg who had assumed the post of the party's official representative in the city, and was informed that the current music director, as a non-Aryan, would momentarily be dismissed, and that Bohm was the logical choice for the job -- but for the fact that they could find no record of his party membership. When confronted about what party he belonged to, the conductor replied "Music." He was denied the post after refusing to join the Nazi Party.

In 1934, following Fritz Busch's forced resignation as music director of the Dresden Opera, Bohm took up the Dresden post. Although he was later criticized for this, Bohm retained a cordial friendship with Busch himself. The Dresden post led to other appointments, which, in turn, resulted in the beginning of his international career. In the mid-'30s, he made his London debut at Covent Garden and Queen's Hall, conducting the Saxon State Opera and Orchestra.

Bohm's musical activities during the Nazi era were extensive, both in Germany and Austria, where he conducted many of the Vienna Philharmonic's subscription concerts following the country's annexation by Germany in 1938, and became director of the Vienna State Opera on January 1, 1943, a post that he held until the Allied victory in 1945. He recorded many works with the Vienna Opera and Philharmonic, as well as the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra. Among Bohm's important and groundbreaking recordings during this era were the Bruckner Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5, several of Strauss' and Mozart's operas, and the symphonies of Mozart and Brahms, among others.

Bohm's activities during World War II were seldom written about during his lifetime, although they were much discussed. On one level, he was courageous musical figure, championing the music of Richard Strauss, conducting the opera Die Schweigsame Frau ("The Silent Woman") despite the official disdain with which the work -- with its libretto written by the outlawed, "non-Aryan" Stefan Zweig -- was held in official government circles (Hitler himself, at Strauss' heartfelt and unyielding insistence, allowed an exception to the ban on performance, but then declined to attend), and Strauss' subsequent opera, Daphne, which was dedicated to Bohm. He also sheltered a Jewish industrialist for over a year in Vienna, quietly challenging the Nazi-era regime, even as he participated in official functions on behalf of the government and the party.

As director of the Vienna State Opera, Bohm brought the company's standards back up from a low that they'd hit at the end of 1938, after the impact of the German annexation and the departure of many of the company's best musicians. During the war, he conducted the work of such other contemporary composers as Hans Pfitzner and Theodore Berger, but his most important commitment was to Richard Strauss. From the comparative safety of Vienna, where Strauss had fled -- under the protection of the appointed governor -- after his falling out with Nazi officialdom, Bohm staged an 80th birthday celebration of the composer's music.

Bohm was banned from public performances in Germany and Austria in the wake of the Allied victory in 1945, but he became a frequent guest of opera companies elsewhere in Europe, and from 1950 until 1954 served as director of German repertory at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1954, he returned to Vienna and, in a bitter victory over his rival Clemens Krauss, was given the directorship of the Vienna State Opera, where he conducted the production of Beethoven's Fidelio that not only reopened the rebuilt opera house, but was the subject of an NBC prime-time network special (Call to Freedom) early in 1956. Among his most notable recordings during this period in Vienna was his performance of Strauss' Die Frau Ohne Schatten for English Decca. In February of 1956, Bohm also made his long-delayed debut in America, as a guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In March of 1956 he resigned from the Vienna Philharmonic's music directorship amid criticism over his frequent absences from the city. Bohm never took another music director's spot, preferring conducting to the distractions of administration.

His Metropolitan Opera debut, and his first performance in Manhattan, took place on October 28, 1957, when he opened the company's 1957-1958 season with a new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, in which Bohm's work was reviewed as "an artistic sensation...cast[ing] its spell over a grateful audience." Bohm was later praised in the New York Herald Tribune for welding an often competitive group of singers into "the most patrician operatic ensemble imaginable." In the 1959 season, he not only revived Don Giovanni, but conducted a highly praised new production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger Von Nurnburg, and, later still, Alban Berg's Wozzeck.

In 1960, Bohm made his Carnegie Hall debut conducting the New York Philharmonic for the first time, in a program of pieces by Mozart, Hindemith, and Brahms that was a great critical and popular success. In 1961, he brought the Berlin Philharmonic on tour of the United States, conducting a program that included Strauss' Don Juan and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. That same year, he also conducted Wagner's Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time. And with the New York Philharmonic in November of 1962, now at their new home in Philharmonic (later Avery Fisher) Hall at Lincoln Center, he conducted Mozart's Symphony No. 41 (Jupiter) and Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 which, in those days, was still a work little heard in the United States.

During this same period, Bohm's son, the actor Carl (aka Karlheinz) Boehm, achieved some prominence in international movies. During the early '60s, he was seen in major roles in such blockbusters as MGM's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, although his best starring part was as the lead in Michael Powell's classic Peeping Tom.

Even as Karl Bohm's renown in America was growing, his obligations in Europe were burgeoning as well. Apart from operatic engagements and a growing body of recordings, mostly for the Deutsche Grammophon label (although the most highly praised of his three recordings of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte was done in London, for EMI), involved work with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra (of which he also served as president), the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Saxon State Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, and the Vienna Philharmonic. His repertory by this time embraced everything from Haydn and Mozart to Berg and Schoenberg, and in addition to steady concert commitments throughout the '60s and '70s, he also made hundreds of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, including new performances (primarily live) of virtually all of Richard Strauss' major operas, all of the Mozart operas, the Beethoven symphonies, the late Mozart symphonies, and most of the rest of his repertory, up to and including 20th century works. In 1964, in recognition of his career, the Austrian government granted Bohm the honorary title of "General Music Director of Austria," while in Germany, a statue of the conductor stands at the Berlin Opera House.

His greatest American triumph took place in October of 1966, when he conducted Strauss' Die Frau Ohne Schatten at the Metropolitan Opera. In its review of the concert, The New York Times critic wrote of Bohm, "Among the present group of Met opera conductors, he towers like a colossus."

In 1967, Bohm brought the Vienna Philharmonic to Carnegie Hall and the Montreal Worlds Fair ("Expo '67"), and under Bohm's baton the Vienna Philharmonic later played a role in the 125th anniversary celebration of the New York Philharmonic's founding. With the deaths of Furtwangler, Walter, and Klemperer, Bohm was the last conductor from 19th-century Austria or Germany to remain active into the 1970s, and his work continued at a furious pace -- including tours of Japan with the Vienna Philharmonic -- until he suffered a stroke in 1981, from which he never fully recovered.

Bohm's recordings are noted for their elegance of nuance. A distinctly restrained figure at the podium, he encouraged precise playing from his musicians, and painstaking rehearsal from his singers. With this approach, he was able to coax exceptionally fine performances from orchestras and casts of decidedly uneven capabilities, allowing them to rise to the occasion of his performances, and superb work from ensembles such as the Vienna, Berlin, and New York Philharmonic orchestras.

Bohm's 1930s Dresden performances of Bruckner's symphonies, which have been reissued on CD by various private labels, are of particular note for the absence of the Wagnerian bombast with which these works were usually treated. Part of the explanation for Bohm's differing approach, according to some scholars, play with the fact that the Dresden orchestra members were equipped with notably old instruments, dating to Bruckner's own time, which created a sound more in keeping with the actual scores as they were known at the time, and less bombastic than newer, more "efficient" instruments, could produce. His complete recordings in Germany and Austria from 1933 through 1945 comprised a set of more than 20 long-playing records.

His early-'40s recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic are fascinating, despite their obvious sonic deficiencies. His Brahms Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 are especially compelling, although his recording of the Mozart Symphony No. 35 has long since been supplanted by his stereo version on Deutsche Grammophon. It is Bohm's modern recordings for Deutsche Grammophon that are considered the core of his legacy. This includes his recordings of Richard Strauss' music, orchestral and operatic, which have few equals -- only Rudolf Kempe and Herbert Von Karajan -- and his Beethoven, Mozart, Bruckner and Schubert are also considered to be among the finest available. His performances are noted for their carefully nuanced playing, without the bombast of Von Karajan's interpretations. ~ Bruce Eder