Background
Wilhelm Gericke was born on April 18, 1845, in Gratz, Styria, of parents who, though not wealthy, sympathized with their son’s musical ambitions.
Wilhelm Gericke was born on April 18, 1845, in Gratz, Styria, of parents who, though not wealthy, sympathized with their son’s musical ambitions.
Wilhelm Gericke went to Vienna at the age of seventeen, where he studied with Felix Dessoff at the Vienna Conservatorium from 1862 to 1865.
Wilhelm Gericke began his career as an operatic conductor in Linz. By 1874, he was assistant conductor at the Vienna Hofoper, and in 1880, he succeeded Brahms as the conductor of the famous Gesellschaftsconcerte, and also took over the leadership of the Singverein.
At the Hofoper, he conducted the first performance of Goldmark’s Konigin von Saba (1875), and the first Vienna performance of Wagner’s Tannhäuser in the Paris version, playing the piano score at sight on his first meeting with Wagner.
His gifts had already made a name for him, and in spite of a disagreement with Jahn, he might have continued at the Hofoper. It so happened, however, that Col. Henry L. Higginson of Boston, when in the Austrian capital in the fall of 1883, heard Gericke conduct a performance of Aida which so impressed him that he determined to secure his services for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Accepting Col. Higginson’s offer, Gericke emigrated to Boston in 1884 and succeeded Georg Plenschel as director of the Boston Orchestra. On his arrival, he found himself confronted with a state of affairs which could not but shock an artist accustomed to the finished performances demanded of the metropolitan European orchestras.
Rehearsals were not taken very seriously, and much music of a lighter type was included in the symphony repertory. Gericke, with his concept of what a first-rate orchestra should be, at once set to work to bring the organization to the proper standard.
With untiring energy, and despite much adverse criticism, he succeeded in achieving his purpose.
He was at first much censured for the “heaviness” of his programs, and himself declared in 1887, when Brahms’s Third and Bruckner’s Seventh symphonies drove his audience out of the hall by the hundreds, that “during the last movement we were more people on the stage than in the audience. ”
The next year, he nearly emptied the house with a performance of Strauss’s symphonic poem, “Aus Italien. ” In 1889, ill health obliged Gericke to relinquish his baton and return to Vienna. There he resumed the direction of the Gesellschaftsconcerte, resigning the position in 1895.
In 1898, he returned to America to conduct the Boston Symphony, and continued with the organization until 1906, when he retired to private life in Vienna.
During his incumbency of the directorship, he had brought from Europe and had added to his orchestral forces some very notable musicians, including Franz Kneisel, Bernhard Listemann, Louis Svecenski, and Alwin Schroeder.
In 1884, Gericke was made an honorary member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien.