Oskar Nedbal

Biography

Oskar Nedbal (26 March 1874 – 24 December 1930) was a Czech violist, composer and conductor of classical music.

Early life

Nedbal was born in Tábor in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. He studied the violin at the Prague Conservatory under Antonín Bennewitz, theory under Karel Knittl and Karel Stecker, and composition with Antonín Dvořák.

Career

In 1891 he founded the Bohemian String Quartet, later known as the Czech Quartet, which disbanded in 1933. The original members, alongside Nedbal on viola, were Karel Hoffmann, Josef Suk and Otto Berger.
He was principal conductor with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra from 1896 to 1906. From 1907 until 1917 he lived in Vienna and conducted the Wiener Tonkünstler-Orchester.
A great admirer of his teacher Antonín Dvořák, Nedbal also paid homage to other composers. For example, in his 1910 composition, Romantic Piece, Op. 18 for cello and piano, Nedbal cleverly inserts a theme usually associated with Mozart, Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman.
His works include one (unsuccessful) opera, Jakob the Peasant (1919–1920), and the operettas Chaste Barbara (1910), Polenblut (1913), The Vineyard Bride (1916), and Beautiful Saskia (1917). Polenblut was adapted by Edgar Smith into the English-language operetta The Peasant Girl which played on Broadway in 1915.
From 1923 he was the general director of the Bratislava National Opera. In 1926 he conducted the premiere of Jan Levoslav Bella's opera, Wieland der Schmied in Bratislava.

Death and legacy

Because of mounting personal debts, Nedbal committed suicide by jumping out of a window of the Zagreb Opera House on 24 December 1930.
In recent years, Nedbal's haunting Valse Triste featured in his ballet Der Faule Hans (The Tale of Simple Johnny) has been a favorite stand-alone encore piece of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. The waltz is also played on the piano at a key moment by one of the characters in Heimito von Doderer's novel of the inter-war years in Vienna, The Demons (Die Dämonen) (1956).
Since 2019, the Oskar Nedbal International Viola Competition has commemorated Nedbal's name.