Eugen Szenkar (Conductor, Arranger)

Born: April 9, 1891 - Budapest, Hungary
Died: March 28, 1977 - Düsseldorf, Germany

The Hungarian conductor and arranger, Eugen (actually, Jenö) Szenkar [Szenkár], originally studied music with his father, a prominent organist. Later he attended classes at the Academy of Music in Budapest.

Eugen Szenkar conducted at the Deutsches Landestheater in Prague (1911-1913), the Budapest Volksoper (1913-1915), the Salzburg Mozarteum (1915-1916), in Altenburg (1916-1920), at the Frankfurt am Main Opera (1920-1923), the Berlin Volksoper (1923-1924), and the Cologne Opera (1924-1933). With the advent of the Nazi regime, as a Jew he was forced to leave Germany in 1933. He lived in Russia until 1933, and from 1944 conducted the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra in Rio de Janeiro. He returned to Germany in 1950, conducted the Mannheim Opera (1950-1951) and was Generalmusikdirektor in Düsseldorf from 1952 to 1960. He also conducted in Tel-Aviv.

Though almost forgotten, before World War II Eugen Szenkar was a widely estimated and renowned conductor. Among others, composers like Béla Bartók, Prokofieff, Chatchaturian were personal friends of him, some of their works he even premiered. Apart from some radio recordings (Hamburg, Cologne) the musical heritage of Szenkár is in the hand of private collectors.

Source: Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of 20^th Century Classical Musicians (1997); supplements from other sources
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (October 2009)

Eugen Szenkar: Short Biography | Orchestral Transcriptions: Works | Recordings

Links to other Sites

Eugen Szenkar - Biographische Stationen (Achiphon) [PDF, German]

Szenkar, Eugen (Jenö) [Encyclopedia.com)