Felix Günther

Felix Günther (1886 - 1951) Felix Günther (Guenther) was a pianist, arranger and conductor. He worked in the German film industry in the 1920s and 1930s. He conducted the film orchestra for several productions of the UFA (Universum-Film AG) in Berlin. He arranged and supervised the musical scores of specific music for films and songs. Günther was also active as a free lancer in broadcasting, the modern medium of those days. These activities more or less stopped from 1933 on, the year the Nazis came to power. Before that he had conducted the Berlin Symphony Orchestra (Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester) when making recordings for the Polydor label (Deutsche Grammophon) and other labels like Parlophon and Homocord, already in the 1920s, well before the electrical recording process was introduced. As a pianist and as a conductor he accompanied various singers like Gitta Alpar (soprano), Ria Ginster (soprano), Lotte Schöne (soprano), Friedrich Brodersen (baritone), Martin Abendroth (bass), Heinrich Schlusnus (baritone). He made a recording with violinist Grete Eweler for the Homocord label. He also was the pianist in the recording of Schubert's Forellen Quintet (Trout) with the Nikolas Lambinon Artist Quartet originally known as Nicolas Lambinon Künstler-Quartett. In that recording he played a grand piano of the German piano maker Schwechten. Felix Günther is best known as the conductor who accompanied the popular, Jewish singer Joseph Schmidt. The name of Felix Günther is hardly ever mentioned on the covers and labels of the recordings of Joseph Schmidt. Schmidt performed in Carnegie Hall in 1937, but returned to Germany to join his relatives. Via Holland, where he was very popular and where he gave a last recital in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, he fled to Switzerland where he was interned in a refugee camp. But fate was far from kind. Joseph Schmidt became ill and died there in 1942. Felix Günther however - already in his fifties - did not hesitate to flee from Germany. He too went to the US in 1937. Right from the day he arrived in the US, he was active in the New York music scene. He wrote arrangements and compiled these for various publications. Felix Guenther was very active in the New York music scene. He gave various lectures at gatherings organized by the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Several years after the war had ended he then returned to Europe on the request of Donald Gabor. Felix Gunther who was born in 1886 in Trautenau, Austria, studied in Vienna and Berlin and was later a professor at the Humboldt Hochschule in Berlin, died May 5th, 1951 at the age of 65 in New York.