Ernst Marzendorfer studied music at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and conducting with Clemens Krauss. His first permanent appointment was as a conductor at the Graz Opera, where he worked from 1945 to 1951 before moving to the Salzburg Opera and teaching conducting at the Mozarteum. He was a member of the music staff at the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, during 1952 and 1953, after which he became conductor of the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, touring America with this ensemble in 1956 as part of the Mozart bicentenary celebrations. Having moved from Salzburg to Berlin in 1958 to join the conducting staff of the Deutsche Oper, he joined the Vienna State Opera in the same role in 1961. Marzendorfer’s debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, came in 1965; and he conducted the first performance of his reconstruction of the final movement of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 at Graz in 1969.

Despite advancing years Marzendorfer has remained active as a conductor, notably in his home country of Austria, directing both opera performances and symphony concerts. His major achievement in the field of recording has been his conducting of the complete recording of the Haydn symphonies made with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra for the American organisation, Musical Heritage Society, between 1967 and 1971. Although only issued in America on LP this set fully demonstrates Marzendorfer’s innate musicality and idiomatic sense of style. Those of his recordings which have achieved the widest circulation feature the harpist Nicanor Zabaleta on the Deutsche Grammophon label. The repertoire here includes harp concertos by Boieldieu and Reinecke, Rodrigo’s Concerto Serenade, and Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp with Karl-Heinz Zoller as the flute soloist. Marzendorfer’s recording of Johann Strauss II’s operetta Eine Nacht in Venedig, made in Hungary, shows a complete mastery of the Viennese style, which is also evident in his later recordings for Marco Polo of music by two other members of the Strauss family, Johann I and Josef.

Orfeo has issued Marzendorfer’s Salzburg Festival performance of Cavalieri’s La Rappresentazione di Anima, e di Corpo, and a recording in which he conducts a concert performance of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots for Austrian Radio has had considerable currency. The American company Phoenix USA has issued a recording of the piano concerto (1961) by Alberto Ginastera with Hilde Sommer as soloist, in which Marzendorfer conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Conductors, Naxos 8.558087–90).