Rudolph Ganz

Rudolph Ganz studied at Conservatory of Lausanne. Joan Caldwell and Abby Whiteside are recorded as having studied under Rudolph Ganz. Employment is recorded with St. Distinctions recorded are Officer of the Legion of Honour, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and Order of Lincoln.

Born in Zurich, Ganz studied cello with Friedrich Hegar and piano with Robert Freund at the Zürich Musikschule. He also took composition lessons with Charles Blanchet at the Lausanne Conservatory. From 1897 to 1898, Ganz studied piano with Fritz Blumer in Strasbourg, and from 1899 to 1900 with Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin and Weimar and composition with Heinrich Urban in Berlin. On 7 December 1899, he made his piano debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; and on 14 April 1900, his conducting debut with this orchestra in the world premiere of his own Symphony No. 1 in E major. In May, Florenz Ziegfeld, Sr. visited Berlin and invited Ganz to join the piano department of the Chicago Musical College. In August 1900, Ganz moved to Chicago. Ganz joined the piano department and became a member of the board of directors of the Chicago Musical College from fall 1900 through spring 1905. On March 20, 1903, Ganz made his American orchestral debut as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Theodore Thomas in the first Chicago performance of Vincent d'Indy's Symphony No. 1, at the Auditorium Theatre. On 5 March 1905, in a Chicago recital at the Music Hall (in the Fine Arts Building), Ganz became the first pianist to perform Maurice Ravel's music (Jeux d'eau (Ravel)) in the United States (Harold Bauer played a first Boston performance of Jeux d'eau on 4 December 1905). From fall 1905 to spring 1908 Ganz lived in New York City and began concert tours throughout North America, Europe, and Cuba. On 8 November 1907, in New York's Mendelssohn Hall, Ganz played the American premiere of Ravel's Oiseaux tristes and Barque sur l'ocean (from Miroirs, 1905). In 1908 he moved to Berlin to teach and concertize. He played first Berlin performances of Vincent d'Indy and Béla Bartók and first London performances of Ravel and John Alden Carpenter. His Berlin pupils included Chicago pianist Edward Joseph Collins, St. Louis pianist Leo C. Miller, Kansas City pianist and later Ganz's assistant Mollie Margolies, Norwegian pianist Nils Larsen, and American composers Charles Haubiel and Edward Ballantine. In 1913 Ganz began recording piano rolls for Welte-Mignon and Duo-Art, and in 1916 for Pathé. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Ganz returned to New York City and taught at the Institute of Musical Art (later The Juilliard School). In 1920 in Carnegie Hall, he conducted the New York Philharmonic in his own performance of Franz Liszt's E-flat Major Piano Concerto, using the Aeolian Company's Duo-Art reproducing Weber grand piano and becoming the first pianist to conduct an orchestra for the concerto in which he played by piano roll.

From 1921 to 1927 he was the conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and did much to raise it to the top rank of orchestras] As the fourth conductor of this orchestra Ganz was responsible for building and educating a new symphonic audience. The orchestra's first recordings, innovative children's and young people's concerts, as well as extensive spring tours to the Midwest, South, and Southwest were the sources for this new audience. During his six seasons twenty-one percent of the music presented comprised first St. Louis performances. They included Maurice Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4, Ottorino Respighi's Fountains of Rome, Ralph Vaughan Williams's London Symphony, Richard Strauss's A Hero's Life, Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, Leo Sowerby's Suite From Northland, and Arthur Honegger's Pastorale d'été (American premiere). While in St. Louis, he was initiated as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity in 1924 at the University of Missouri. In 1928 he returned to teach at the Chicago Musical College, serving as its president from 1934 to 1954, but he continued to maintain a national presence. From 1930 to 1933 Ganz founded and conducted the National Little Symphony (renamed the National Chamber Symphony) sponsored by NBC to promote contemporary music. He led the Omaha Symphony Orchestra from 1936 to 1941. From 1939 to 1948 he was permanent conductor of the Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony orchestras, and from 1944 to 1946, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. From 1946 to 1948, he was music director of the Grand Rapids Symphony in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was a community orchestra at the time. On 20 February 1941, Ganz performed his own Piano Concerto in E-flat major, Op. 32, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Frederick Stock, its world premiere. The work was commissioned by Frederick Stock for the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Most of Ganz's musical compositions are held at The Newberry Library.

Rudolph Ganz was the son of Rudolf Ganz, Sr., and Sophie Bartenfeld. He had three brothers: Paul, Emil, and Hans. Ganz married American soprano Mary Forrest in 1900, in Berlin. They had a son, Anton Roy Ganz, born in 1903, who later served as Swiss Ambassador to the Soviet Union. After Mary Forrest Ganz died in 1956, Ganz married Esther LaBerge, who was a concert singer and associate professor of voice at Chicago Musical College, in 1959. Esther LaBerge Ganz had one daughter, Jeanne Colette Collester, a professor of art history. Esther LaBerge Ganz died in 2007.