The second cover made by Curt John Witt for the recording by Hans Wolf of Symphony in D (César Franck).

   
See also:
The Seattle Times
Andante Magazine

Hans Wolf was a friend of Marcel Prawy's and, like Prawy and so many other refugees, enlisted in the Us Army during World War II. He became a US citizen and was sent to Europe. Via Innsbruck he returned to Vienna in 1945. But he did not stay for long. He finally choose to settle in the US, but only after making a few recordings for Don Gabor's Remington Records in 1950, conducting the Austrian Symphony Orchestra.

Despite the low quality of the recordings and pressings, and despite the few recordings that were made of this conductor, one can hear that Hans Wolf was a man who knew about styles and had insight in whatever score he would bring to his audience. A Symphony of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is playful and detailed, yet serious. In the build up and development of themes in César Franck's Symphony in D he creates suspense and excitement, while the individual structure of every movement comes to light, specifically in the slow, lyrical movements and passages. His Franck is not the heavy, slow and ponderous Franck, but a somewhat faster, no less interesting rendering. In the second movement the orchestra is singing. The performance must have been the result of good communication and good instruction, no doubt, but they also convey that the basis of it is talent. Timing and phrasing are excellent. Dr. Wolf masters the score and is in full control throughout. The recording greatly evokes his passion for music. The performance has nuance and never fails to get the attention of the listener.

Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major Op. 75 with the Austrian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Wolf - Remington R-199-19.

Also his Brahms has the great line, the structural concept, asking the utmost discipline of the orchestra, even though the recording time was limited and he had to rely on the fact that the musicians knew this or that work already more or less by heart.
Hans Wolf was a creative musician, enjoying all sorts of music. He had imagination. His enthusiasm must have been aroused very easily. "Let's do it" could have been his life's motto. But he also had the energy to work, to further the quality and to persevere in following his ideas, sticking to them, and not being distracted at all. His artistic insight, his feeling for the essence of the music, must have been a natural gift, but was certainly heightened and shaped when studying with legendary Heinrich Schenker.

Heinrich Schenker (June 19, 1868 - January 14, 1935) was a musicologist, a composer, and a musician. He composed mainly for piano, wrote Songs (Lieder), and made arrangements of Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, of Piano Concertos of Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, and of Five Organ Concertos of Handel. He also wrote an "explanation" to Beethoven's Sonatas Op. 101, 109, 110 and 111. Searching for the essence of a composition, he analyzed the music and discovered unexpected complexities and structures existing within a composition, presenting themselves in layers, showing the relationships between melody lines and chords. He said that a composition could be understood in its essence by defining the "Urlinie", the kernel line, so to speak, and the "Ursatz", the inner, basic structure which is the fundament of a composition. From an early day on Wilhelm Furtwangler was a student of Schenker's. Heinrich Schenker had studied with Anton Bruckner and had witnessed Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, and also many important composers of the first half of the 20th century like Richard Strauss and Arnold Schönberg. Wilhelm Furtwangler had been struck by the ideas Schenker put forward in his book "Beethovens Neunte Sinfonie" (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). Furtwängler writes in his essay on Heinrich Schenker (published in "Ton und Wort", 1954), that he, quite by accident, picked up Schenker's book in 1911, the time when Furtwangler started his career in Lübeck where he was "Kapellmeister". Furtwangler did not agree with everything Schenker wrote and he also found that Schenker could not hold on to his theory of the "Urlinie" completely. Of greater importance however is the idea introduced by Schenker called "Fernhören" (Fernhoren), listening over a distance in time, a philosophical-psychological, natural, inborn attitude of man. It means understanding the greater concept of the music, the structure of a musical work, which goes beyond the annotation, goes beyond a single phrase or a separate movement. "Fernhören" is hearing in perspective, hearing the work's evolution, while being reminded of origin and cause, response and result, which may well lay in an earlier movement or melody. It is the ability of the human being that he can listen in time and space (realm) and thus can grasp the greater architecture of the music, knowing its origin and knowing where it leads to. Heinrich Schenker found that "Fernhören", is typically and most significant for German classical music. (Interpreting this idea of Schenker's to the extreme, one could say that in its essence it is Carl Gustav Jung's "collective unconsciousness" made conscious, and finally materializing in sound.) As is so often the case when a great mind is devising a theory, all and everything has to be explained in relation to the original idea put forward. Nevertheless the Schenkerian ideas about structure and counterpoint can intensify the study of music and make the performance of a composition more comprehensible. In that lies the importance of his approach. Another writing of Schenker's was on Schubert's 8th Symphony (Unfinished, Unvollendete), the Symphony that asks for a thorough understanding of its structure and development, in order to set the right pace and create the appropriate atmosphere, right from the first chords of its somewhat mysterious beginning. Schenker's publications are many. Another student of Schenker's was Carl Bamberger (1902-1987), who started off as a cellist and became a conductor with great timing and he had control over the execution when conducting many a composition. Carl Bamberger migrated to the USA and became Director of the Orchestra and Opera Section of Mannes College of Music, New York, in 1938. You can hear Carl Bamberger on Musical Master Pieces Society (Concert Hall) recordings. Understanding music in this perspective gives birth to a completely new and greater concept of music in general and of a musical work in particular. Schenker had many more pupils and followers. Among them Paul Hindemith, Otto Klemperer, Arnold Schönberg and ... Hans Wolf. - R.A.B.

Hans Wolf studied for about two years with Heinrich Schenker, from March 1933 till the end of 1934, prior to Heinrich Schenker's death in January 1935.
In the correspondence of Oswald Jonas (another follower) to Heinrich Schenker there is a letter describing a nasty occurrence in September of 1934. After having traveled to Hamburg, young Hans Wolf, who was Jewish, was denied by the Nazis to return to Vienna. (See: Schenker's Correspondence). Through the intervention of Wilhelm Furtwangler however , he was allowed to return.

Hans Wolf in the nineteen sixties. Picture courtesy the Seattle Opera.

Hans Wolf was originally from Hamburg, he was born in the Hansa town on December 5, 1912, came to Vienna to study at the University and received a Ph.D. in 1937 with his thesis on the "Notions of Musical Movement in the Teachings of Bass and Composition of the 18th Century as a Continuation of the Instruction of the Counterpoint" (Die musikalischen Bewegungsbegriffe in den Generalbaß- und Kompositionslehren des 18. Jahrhunderts als Fortsetzung der Lehre vom Kontrapunkt”). The subject of his thesis shows the influence of Heinrich Schenker.

The political situation in Austria was getting more and more threatening. The earlier Hamburg incident, the rumors that the Anschluss (Annexation) could be at hand, and the fact that Hans had now finished his studies and had received his title, these made the Wolf family (Hans Wolf was 26 years of age) decide to migrate to the United States where they found refuge, as so many Europeans who had fled for the Nazis did.

The early release of Cesar Franck's Symphony in D conducted by Hans Wolf - Remington RLP-199-36.

In the US, Wolf taught at John Fletcher College (Iowa) for a while. He enlisted in the Army, probably in 1943, the same year as Marcel Prawy did. Wolf became a translator, eventually was sent to Europe, and finally returned to Vienna, to the musical culture that had formed him. Like Berlin also Vienna was divided in sectors of the occupying countries. Although he later said that he was living it up, he must have experienced the cumbersome and restricted atmosphere, and there was the fact that many just continued where they had left off in 1938. He choose to go back and live in America for good, thus escaping the trauma of his younger years. There are at least two reported instances when he returned to Europe on a visit. In 1953 he came to Vienna as Marcel Prawy recounted in his book "Marcel Prawy talks about his life" (Marcel Prawy erzählt aus seinem Leben, Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna, 2001), and in 1958 and/or 1959 he must have traveled to Germany to conduct the Mannheim National Symphony Orchestra.

Hans Wolf in the nineteen sixties. Images submitted by Monte Jacobson, courtesy The Seattle Opera. Picture courtesy the Seattle Opera.	Hans Wolf at 90, conducting Johann Strauss' Operetta The Gypsy Baron in Seattle in 2003. Picture courtesy the Seattle Opera.

When Marcel Prawy started producing recorded performances for Donald Gabor's Remington Records in 1950, he also asked Dr. Hans Wolf, still living in Vienna, to join him. Wolf made recordings of compositions by Brahms, Franck, Mozart, and by Haydn (with cellist Gaspar Cassado). After these works were taped Hans Wolf went to live in the US, but was asked by Gabor in the summer of 1951 to join Marcel Prawy once again for the production of a series of high priced LP recordings which were pressed on higher quality vinyl and had luxurious, heavy gatefold covers of which the liner notes were adorned with the laurel emblem mentioning "A Marcel Prawy Production". This was the initial Masterseal Series.

After Wolf had returned to America he worked in various cities and with several opera companies. For Four Star Television in Los Angeles he conducted Aida (Verdi) and Carmen (Bizet). At the invitation of Glynn Ross, founding general director of the Seattle Opera, and conductor Henry Holt, Wolf became assistant and then associate conductor and chorus master of the Seattle Opera from 1969 till 1981. He performed many operas in English, often with his own translation, the Associated Press reported. From 1981 until 1996 he led the revival of (the co-founded) Tacoma Opera, serving as artistic director and conductor.

In 2003 Hans Wolf was honored by Seattle's Mayor Greg Nickels by proclaiming March 30, 2003 Hans Wolf Day. He also received congratulations from Washington's governor and a special handwritten note from Beverly Sills on "MET" stationery. On August 5, 2005, Hans Wolf died in Seattle.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 conducted by Hans Wolf was one of the earliest Remington releases. At right the modern cardboard cover with the Remington logo designed by Alex Steinweiss.
	Violoncellist Gaspar Cassado plays Haydn's Cello Concerto with the Austrian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Wolf, and Mozart's K 385 on a 10" Concerteum release from France: TCR 257. At left César Franck's Symphony in D on the German DIAMANT label.
The pre-Steinweiss cover of the recording of Hans Wolf conducting Symphony No. 2 of Johannes Brahms on RLP-199-19.Cover by Sherman Alpert.

The recordings of Hans Wolf for Remington Records:

R-149-9 - Beethoven: Symphony No. 5. The Austrian Symphony Orchestra. (Was also released as Plymouth P-12-65.)

From the Kurt Wöss Page:
On Masterseal MSLP 5008 Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 and Schubert's Symphony No. 8 conducted by Kurt Wöss can be found, whereas there exists no Remington disc with this coupling conducted by Wöss. Beethoven's Fifth was released on a 10" disc (R-149-9) with the Vienna Symphonic Society Orchestra conducted by Hans Wolf and Schubert's Eighth was originally a recording with conductor H. Arthur Brown (R-149-15). The name Wöss was probably a convenient substitute, especially when Brown had fallen from grace and the Remington label ceased to exist. 

R-149-33 - Mozart: Symphony No. 35 "Haffner" (K 385)

R-149-48 - Beethoven: Egmond Overture, conducted by Hans Wolf (coupled with Overture Ruy Blas, Mendelssohn, conducted by George Singer.

R-199-19 - Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major Op. 73 (Released in the Fall of 1951)

R-199-36 - Franck: Symphony in D minor (Released in the Fall of 1951)

R-199-79 - Haydn: Cello Concerto with Gaspar Cassado and Mozart Symphony no. 35 "Haffner" (K 385)

R-149-33 - Mozart: Symphony No. 35 "Haffner" (K 385)

One may regret that Dr. Hans Wolf did not make more recordings for the Remington label or another label as the performance of the Franck Symphony in D is very well conducted and has atmosphere, and after all shows his natural feeling for song, melody and presentation. And though the performance is absolutely Wolf's, the influence of Heinrich Schenker is certainly noticeable. There is only one more recording known to me of Hans Wolf and that is the one when he conducted the Mannheim National Symphony Orchestra in Haydn's Military Symphony (No. 100, in G), released on the Period label, SHO-2321 in 1959.

Original research, concept and text by Rudolf A. Bruil. Page first published March 25, 2008