Leopold Hager
Leopold Hager has become best known for his performances and recordings of the early Mozart operas and other seldom-performed operas by Haydn and Gluck. Hager is also a podium veteran in the purely instrumental realm, but again with strong connections to the music of Mozart and that of other eighteenth century composers. Yet his repertory encompasses a range of composers, both early and modern, taking in the disparate likes of Handel, Smetana, Schnittke, and Helmut Eder. Hager has served as music director or principal conductor of several prominent orchestras, both in the realms of opera and concert music. He has recorded for a variety of labels, including Philips and Vox.
Hager was born on October 6, 1935, in Salzburg, Austria. He exhibited rare talent in his youth, enrolling at the Salzburg Mozarteum in 1949, where he studied keyboard, conducting, and composition. His most important teachers there were Bernhard Paumgartner, Gerhard Wimberger, Cesar Bresgen, and Egon Kornauth. Hager concluded studies in 1957 and accepted the appointment of assistant conductor at the City Theater in Mainz that same year.
Hager left Mainz in 1962, and for the next seven years held brief but important conducting posts: from 1962-1964 he conducted at the Linz Landestheater, in the 1964-1965 season he was conductor at the Cologne Opera, and from 1965-1969 he worked as the general music director in Freiburg.
It was in the following decade that Hager made his greatest breakthroughs: as chief conductor of Salzburg's Mozarteum Orchestra and Landestheater (1969-1981), he not only made significant inroads in Austria and the Germanic sphere, but established a major international career. He debuted at the Met in 1976 with Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, at Teatro Colon in 1977 with Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and at Covent Garden in 1978 with Le nozze. In the late '70s Hager began recording the early Mozart operas for Philips with some of the finest opera singers of the time, including Peter Schreier, Werner Krenn, Edith Mathis, Lucia Popp, Agnes Baltsa, and many others. The complete edition (five operas) was reissued by Philips in 2006.
In 1981 Hager accepted the position of chief conductor of the Luxembourg Radio Symphony Orchestra. He remained active conducting for the remainder of the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. Hager retired from teaching conducting at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts in 2004.
© TiVo
Discography
20 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Mozart & Gulda Piano Works (Live)
Friedrich Gulda, Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by BR-Klassik on 2 jun. 2017
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Haydn, Boccherini, Vivaldi: Cello Concertos / Cellokonzerte
David GerIngas, RIAS Sinfonietta, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Eurodisc on 23 jul. 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Complete Piano Concertos
Karl Engel, Leopold Hager, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg
Klassiek - Released by Warner Classics International on 13 sep. 2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach : Concerto Brandebourgeois No. 2 - Suite No. 3 - Cantante, BWV 51
Orchestre symphonique de Radio-Télé Luxembourg, Leopold Hager, Vassil Ivanov, Norbert Mattern, Jean de Ridder, Elisabeth Parcells
Klassiek - Released by Forlane on 1 jan. 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Jubile Haendel : Integrale des concerti pour orgue, Op. 4
Orchestre symphonique de Radio-Télé Luxembourg, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Forlane on 1 jan. 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Ascanio in Alba (Complete Mozart Edition)
Agnes Baltsa, Peter Schreier, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 jan. 1976
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Great Singers Live
Margaret Price, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Heinz Wallberg, Leopold Hager, Thomas Fulton
Opera - Released by BR-Klassik on 26 mei 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gioachino Rossini, The Barber Of Seville
Louis De Froment, Kurt Redel, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Classical.com Music on 16 feb. 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: La Finta Giardiniera (Complete Mozart Edition)
Lilian Sukis, Brigitte Fassbaender, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 jan. 1981
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Mitridate, Rè di Ponto (Complete Mozart Edition)
Werner Hollweg, Arleen Auger, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 jan. 1977
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: La Betulia Liberata (Complete Mozart Edition)
Peter Schreier, Ileana Cotrubas, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 jan. 1979
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 14 & 25
Carl Seemann, NDR Sinfonieorchester, Wilfried Boettcher, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Orfeo on 1 jan. 1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Il Sogno di Scipione (Complete Mozart Edition)
Peter Schreier, Lucia Popp, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 jan. 1980
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Apollo & Hyacinthus (Complete Mozart Edition)
Anthony rolfe Johnson, Arleen Auger, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 12 sep. 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 40 & 41 "Jupiter"
Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Allegretto on 1 jan. 1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
George Frideric Handel, Organ Concerto In F, Op. 4 No. 4
Klassiek - Released by Classical.com Music on 16 feb. 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Tomaschek: Goethe Lieder
Ildiko Raimondi, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by paladino music on 1 okt. 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67 (Menuetto Kids - Classical Music for Children)
Orchestra of Radio Luxembourg, Leopold Hager, Edward Armstrong
Klassiek - Released by Menuetto Classics on 11 mei 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Lucio Silla (Complete Mozart Edition)
Peter Schreier, Arleen Auger, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Decca Music Group Ltd. on 1 jan. 1975
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Süssmayr & Tausch: Clarinet Concertos
Thea King, English Chamber Orchestra, Leopold Hager
Klassiek - Released by Hyperion on 1 feb. 1992
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo