Hoesslin, Franz von

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Hoesslin, Franz von

Hoesslin, Franz von, German conductor and composer; b. Munich, Dec. 31, 1885; d. in an airplane crash in southern France, Sept. 28, 1946. He studied at the Univ. of Munich and with Mottl (conducting) and Reger (composition). He conducted in St. Gallen (1908–11), Riga (1912–14), Lübeck (1919–20), Mannheim (1920–22), and at the Berlin Volksoper (1922–23). After serving as Generalmusikdirektor in Dessau (1923–26), he conducted in Barmen-Elberfeld (1926–27), Bayreuth (1927–28), and Breslau (1932–35). After his wife, the singer Erna Liebenthal, was forced out of Nazi Germany, they settled in Switzerland. He composed orch. works, a Clarinet Quintet, and choral pieces.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire