Willem van Otterloo. Author Rob Mieremet / Anefo. Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Fascinating Facts about Willem van Otterloo


 

Jan Willem van Otterloo, was a Dutch conductor, cellist, and composer. He was born on December 1907 in Winterswijk, Gelderland, in the Netherlands. His father, William Frederik van Otterloo was a railway inspector. He qualified to study medicine at Utrecht University but switched to studying cello and composition at the Amsterdam Conservatoire.

 He died in the Melbourne suburb of East St Kilda in 1978 from injuries suffered in an automobile accident. His body was flown to The Hague for cremation. His notable students include Graham George and Miroslav Miletić.

1. Was One Of The Most Sought-After Artists of 19th and 20th Century

Particularly prized for his performances of 19th and 20th-century music, he made numerous commercial recordings, mostly for Philips Records, with Residentie Orkest, Concert gebouworkest, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Orchestre Lamoureux and (on much rarer occasions) the Sydney Symphony.

2. He Married And Divorced Four Times

Van Otterloo was married and divorced four times in the Netherlands. He married Elisabeth ter Hoeve on 1 August 1935 (divorce 1938). On 22 April 1941 he married Anette Jacoba Adriana Heukers, with whom in December of that year he had a son, Rogier van Otterloo (1941–1988), who would become a well-known conductor in the Netherlands as well. He and Anette divorced in April 1943 but remarried 28 April 1944. They would have another son and two daughters but divorced again on 20 September 1954. Ten days later he married Susanne Maria Anna Wildmann with whom he had another daughter. A month after his fourth divorce, he married Carola Gertie Ludewig (born 1945) on 12 August 1970 in Australia.

3. He Spent His Last Years Performing In Australia Despite Living In His Native Holland For The Better Part

His career was a distinguished one, albeit mostly spent in Holland till his last years, which were spent in Australia. He won first prize for a composition to be played by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. It was to have been conducted by Willem Mengelberg, who fell ill. Eventually, Van Otterloo conducted it himself.

After various smaller posts in Holland he was appointed to the Residentie Orchestra in 1949, quickly raising its standards. The very informative notes by Otto Ketting stress the fact that in those days a chief conductor really was that, dedicating most of his time, right round the year, to conducting and organizing the orchestra. By January 1961 Van Otterloo had already conducted a thousand concerts with Hague RO. He remained their conductor until 1972.

4. He Failed To Achieve Holland’s Greatest Prize

He was disappointed, however, in that he failed to achieve Holland’s greatest musical prize, conductorship of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. This fell vacant with the untimely death of Eduard van Beinum in 1959. After a short hiatus the decision was made in 1961 to jump a generation and appoint the young Bernard Haitink, then so inexperienced that he had to be “assisted” during his first years by the senior – and non-Dutch – conductor Eugen Jochum.

Van Otterloo was understandably wounded at being passed over and eventually left Holland. His last appointment was with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

5. He Recorded His Music On Discs With Various Groups

Even before he became conductor of the Residentie Orchestra, Van Otterloo had made several recordings with it for Decca. He conducted the first Philips LP with the orchestra and recorded prolifically for this label until 1961. Most of the discs were with the Hague Residentie Orchestra but set down in the hall of the Concertgebouw for acoustic reasons.

His contract with Philips terminated in the same year that he was passed over by the Concertgebouw. Whether the two facts are connected in some way, I don’t know. Actually, a small number of recordings – and specifically those on CD 1 – were still made for Philips in the mid-1960s.

6. He Looked Like An Elderly European Statesman

Blue-eyed, silver-haired, and handsome, his bearing ‘courtly and gracious’, van Otterloo looked ‘like an elderly European statesman’. He loved the music of Bach as well as Bruckner and was an authority on the traditional orchestral repertoire of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In private he enjoyed listening to jazz. Other passions were fast cars, fine food and beautiful women. He had been married twice in the Netherlands, both marriages ending in divorce. On 12 August 1970 he married Carola Gertie Ludewig, a 25-year-old German-born air hostess, at the office of the government statist, Melbourne.

7. He Was Adored By Australian Musicians

 Australian musicians revered van Otterloo for his vast musical knowledge, genuineness, empathetic musicality, and strong discipline. His ability to train orchestras to professional standards and to aspire to world-class performance was a special gift.

 As a conductor he was one of the ‘dry-stick’ school, but his reputation in Australia was as a musician capable of great emotion, who elicited the best from his players, even if he was reserved and punctilious. His style exacted a fine orchestral sound which avoided the spectacular.

8. He Was Privileged To Perform At The World Exhibition Tour (Expo 67)

 After successful tours of Australia for the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1962 and 1965, van Otterloo was chief conductor (1967-68) of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. In 1967 he took the orchestra on its first overseas tour, to North America, where it performed twice at the World Exhibition (Expo 67) at Montreal.

As principal guest conductor, in 1970 he again toured with the orchestra. The quality of its thirty performances in Washington, New York and other cities of the U.S.A. established Australia’s musical reputation. In 1973 van Otterloo became chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (while remaining conductor of the Dusseldorf Symphony Orchestra, Germany).

 He led the S.S.O. on its 1974 tour of Britain and Europe. Sympathetic to contemporary music, he incorporated new works of such Australian composers as Peter Sculthorpe, Don Banks, John Anthill and Robert Hughes into the concerts overseas.

9. He Remained A Footnote To Dutch Orchestral History

Van Otterloo might have remained, a footnote to Dutch orchestral history, or a conductor who sometimes cropped up as accompanist to more famous names such as Clara Haskil.

10. He Won A Competition On His Debut

 While playing as a cellist in the Utrecht Stedelijk Orkest, he won a composition prize from the Concert gebouw Orchestra for his Suite No. 3, which he presented in his 1932 conducting debut, also with that orchestra.

He held posts with the Utrecht Stedelijk Orkest, before being appointed chief conductor of the Residentie Orkest in The Hague (1949–1973).