Max Fiedler

Continuing his musical studies in Zittau with the organist Gustav Albrecht, who had been a pupil of Mendelssohn, Fiedler then entered the Leipzig Conservatory in 1877, where the director, Carl Reinecke, was his piano teacher.

Fiedler also studied composition and was active in the city's musical life, developing a close relationship with Julius Spengel, a friend of Brahms.

"[2] As a young man he conducted Brahms' symphonies in the presence of the composer who, not given to reticence when expressing himself, does not appear to have complained of Fiedler's interpretations.

[3] Having found work teaching at the Hamburg Conservatory Fiedler was soon much in demand as a pianist, winning high praise for his 'soft tone'.

Encouraged to persevere by his first wife, he soon became one of the most popular conductors active in Hamburg, alongside Hans von Bülow, whose musicianship he admired and whose baton technique he adopted.

Although he spent four years at the helm in Boston, his conducting attracted some criticism, especially for his volatility as an interpreter, which was viewed as pleasing ‘the general public’ rather than ‘connoisseurs’.

During 1939 he made a series of farewell appearances in Berlin and Essen, but towards the end of the year he became fatally ill, dying in Stockholm, Sweden just a few weeks short of his eightieth birthday.

In addition a number of his later radio performances have been preserved: these include accounts of Brahms' Violin Concerto and Schumann's Symphony No.

Nonetheless, even if Fiedler's recordings do represent a highly individualised interpretative approach, they still allow a fascinating glimpse into a world of musical performance only imperfectly chronicled, for historical reasons, by the gramophone.