Ernst Kunwald

Who was Ernst Kunwald?

Ernst Kunwald was an Austrian conductor.

Ernst Kunwald was born and died in Vienna. He studied law at the University of Vienna, earning his Dr. Juris in 1891. He also studied piano with Teodor Leszetycki and composition with Hermann Graedener. At the Leipzig Conservatory he studied with the composer Salomon Jadassohn.

He conducted opera in the following cities: Rostock, Sondershausen, Essen, Halle, Madrid, Frankfurt, and at Berlin’s Kroll Opera House.

He served as assistant conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. He was the conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra 1912–1917 and the Cincinnati May Festival 1914–1917. His approach to conducting was very different than his predecessor in Cincinnati, the flamboyant Leopold Stokowski. A Stokowski detractor, J. Herman Thuman, wrote a review in The Cincinnati Enquirer that Kunwald “…does not find it necessary to resort to vaudeville stunts to gain the acclaim of the crowd”. American premiers in Cincinnati under Kunwald included Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Richard Strauss’ Alpine Symphony. He also conducted the orchestra’s first recording, for Columbia Records, on January 13, 1917: the Barcarolle from Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann.