In 1932 Ristenpart became the conductor of a little string ensemble in Berlin, whose core was composed of women friends of his wife, the pianist and harpsichordist Ruth Christensen.

Following World War II, Ristenpart returned to devastated Berlin and put works by Gustav Mahler, his favorite composer, on the program of his first public concert in the summer of 1945.

But the worsening of the post-war political situation in Germany in the early 1950s, particularly in Berlin where circulating between the various sectors became increasingly difficult, also created financial problems for radio broadcasting.

These include two complete sets of the Brandenburg concertos, the Orchestral Suites and The Art of Fugue, several albums of Bach vocal cantatas, many Telemann, Vivaldi, many Mozart and Haydn works, but also award-winning records of Britten, Roussel and Hindemith pieces.

In December 1967, Ristenpart suffered a heart attack while on tour in Portugal with the chamber orchestra of the Gulbenkian Foundation and died in a Lisbon hospital on Christmas Eve.

After four years under the baton of the reputable cellist Antonio Janigro, and the death in a car accident of its core musicians, first-violin Georg Friedrich Hendel and his wife Betty Hindrichs-Hendel, first-cellist, it merged with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1973.

- several LPs of Club Français du Disque, Musidisc and Erato with Bach, Mozart and Haydn works were reissued as CDs in the 1980s and 1990s under the labels Accord or Erato (see www.amazon.fr); - ACCORD/UNIVERSAL issued a 6-CD set with Bach orchestral works (including the Brandenburgs, the Suites and The Art of Fugue) in 2000; a 4-CD set entitled "L'art de Teresa Stich-Randall" which includes sacred compositions by Bach, Handel, Mozart and Schubert in which the soprano is accompanied by Ristenpart’s Saar Orchestra, in 2005; a double-CD set with cantatas 56, 82, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140, Gott soll allein mein Herze haben, BWV 169, Coffee Cantata, and 212 in 2006.