Ferdinand Hellmesberger

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ferdinand Hellmesberger (1863–1940) was an Austrian cellist and conductor. He was born in Vienna into the famous Hellmesberger family; his brother Joseph Hellmesberger Jr. was also a musician.

He studied at the Vienna Conservatory with cellist Karl Udel and with Anton Bruckner in music theory. He joined the Vienna Hofburgkapelle (court chapel) in 1879 and, in 1883, became a member of the Hellmesberger Quartet.

In 1884, at age 21, he began teaching at the Vienna Conservatory and became a professor there in 1889, a position he held until 1902. He later served as solo cellist at the court opera (1896) and, in 1902, became Kapellmeister at the Vienna Volksoper. In 1905 he worked as a ballet conductor at the Royal Opera in Berlin.

From 1910 onward, Hellmesberger worked as Kapellmeister in Abbazia (now Opatija, Croatia), Baden bei Wien, Marienbad, and Karlsbad. He died in Vienna, the last of his family to play a major role in Vienna’s musical life. Among his students at the Vienna Conservatory was Franz Schmidt.