George Henschel

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

Georg Isidor Henschel was born at Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) and educated as a pianist, making his first public appearance in Berlin in 1862.^[1] He subsequently took up singing, initially and briefly as a bass but developing a fine baritone voice. In 1868, he sang the role of Hans Sachs in a concert performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Munich.^[2] With one minor and unplanned exception, he never sang on stage, confining himself to concert appearances.^[3]

Henschel was a close friend of Johannes Brahms, whom he met in May 1874 at the Lower Rhenish Music Festival in Cologne, where Henschel sang the role of Harapha in Handel's oratorio Samson.^[4] The friendship lasted until Brahms's death on 3 April 1897; Henschel reports in his memoirs that he arrived in Vienna only hours too late to see Brahms before his passing, and that their last meeting had been at a restaurant in Leipzig in 1896, where they were joined by Edvard Grieg and Arthur Nikisch.^[4]

In 1877, Henschel began a successful career in England, singing at the principal concerts. In 1881, he married the American soprano, Lilian June Bailey (1860–1901), who was associated with him in a number of vocal recitals throughout the United States and nearly all Europe until 1884.^[5][2] Henschel's very highly developed sense of interpretation and style made him an ideal concert singer, while he was no less distinguished as accompanist.^[6] In fact he sometimes combined both functions; he made records as late as 1928 for the Columbia Graphophone Company, singing Lieder by Schubert and Schumann to his own accompaniment.^[7]

Henschel was also a prominent conductor, in America and England. He became the first conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881,^[2] using the name Georg Henschel. On his appointment, he sent his ideas for an innovative seating chart to Brahms, who replied and commented in an approving letter of mid-November 1881.^[8] In 1886, he started a series known as the London Symphony Concerts, and in 1893 became the first conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.^[9]

He was knighted in 1914 and at a farewell concert that year, was presented with a lute engraved with "A token of gratitude for forty years' song".^[10] He taught at the Institute of Musical Art in New York, where he met his second wife, Amy Louis, one of his students.^[11] He also taught sopranos Lucia Dunham^[12][13] and Vera Curtis;^[14] bass and composer Edward M. Zimmerman;^[15] and while in England, Mary Augusta Wakefield.

Henschel's compositions include songs, instrumental works, a Stabat Mater (Birmingham Festival, 1894), an opera, Nubia (Dresden, 1899), and a Requiem (Boston, 1903).^[16] In 1907 he published a collection of his journals and correspondence in Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms and in 1918 Musings and Memories of a Musician. A Mass in eight parts a cappella was first sung in 1916.^[17][18][6]

Henschel's daughter, Georgina "Georgie" Henschel, was a noted breeder of Highland ponies and Norwegian Fjord ponies, and author of several equestrian books.

Henschel died in Aviemore, Scotland,^[19] where he maintained his holiday-home Alltnacriche with his wife. He is buried in the churchyard overlooking Loch Alvie, nearby. In 1944 his daughter Helen Henschel, herself a singer, published a biography of her parents entitled When Soft Voices Die: A Musical Biography.^[20]