Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Herringen, Free State of Prussia, Germany
About Heinz Wallberg
- Heinz Wallberg (16 March 1923 – 29 September 2004) was a German conductor. Wallberg was born in Herringen, Westphalia.
- He studied trumpet, violin and piano.
- He helped to support his family with his musical training after his father became unable to work.
- During World War II, he was a morse code operator, and simultaneously directed an army band and led a string quartet.After the war, he studied at the Dortmund and Cologne conservatories.
- He made his debut as a conductor in Münster with Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.
- He became principal music director in Augsburg in 1954, and in Bremen in 1955, concluding in both posts in 1960.
- In 1957, he recorded a scene from Wagner's Lohengrin, with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the singers Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Christa Ludwig, under the production of Walter Legge.
- He also recorded Mendelssohn's Symphony No.
- 4 Italian, and his A Midsummer Night's Dream incidental music.
- He conducted Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden in 1963.
- In the meantime, at the Vienna and Salzburg festivals he premiered works such as Frank Martin's oratorio Le Mystere de la Nativité (1960) and Rudolf Wagner-Régeny's The Mines at Falun (1961).
- Wallberg inaugurated the Munich Opera Festival in 1962 with a performance of Richard Strauss's Die schweigsame Frau. From 1964 to 1975, Wallberg was principal conductor of the Tonkünstler Orchestra, Vienna.
- He held the same post with the Munich Radio Orchestra from 1975 to 1982, and with the Essen Philharmonic from 1975 to 1991.
- He was the first West German conductor allowed to conduct in East Germany after the partition of Germany.
- His United States conducting debut did not occur until 1991.
- For the last 37 years of his life, he appeared every year with Japan's NHK Symphony Orchestra.
- He conducted the New Zealand premiere of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 1990. He was nominated for a Grammy award in 1982 for his recording of Weinberger's opera Schwanda the Bagpiper.
- He gave a concert in St.
- Peter's Basilica, Rome, for Pope John XXIII in 1959.
- Heinz Wallberg was highly regarded as a conductor of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner.
- Other recordings included Engelbert Humperdinck's Königskinder and La bohème of Ruggero Leoncavallo. Wallberg was married twice, to Maritta Ruhlmann, who died in 1967, and later to Murielle Nouget.
- He had a daughter with Ruhlmann and a son with Nouget.
- He died in Essen in 2004, aged 81.
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