Otto-Werner Mueller

Mueller moved to Montreal in 1951 and worked as a rehearsal pianist, and later as a conductor, for CBC radio and TV, in particular for the programs 'CBC Wednesday Night' and 'L'Heure du concert.' He took lessons with Igor Markevitch in Mexico and in 1958 won second prize in the Pan-American competition for conducting. His next appointment was as chorus master for the opera class of the CMM. He was a founder (1963) and the first director (until 1965) of the Victoria School of Music. He became the conductor of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra in 1963 and spent part of that same year in, Moscow as a guest professor at the Tchaikovsky Cons where Maxim Shostakovich and Rudolph Barshai were among his pupils. In 1965 he conducted the CBC TV production of The Barber of Seville which won an Emmy Award (US) for the best foreign production.

In 1967 Mueller left the Victoria SO and settled in the USA. In 1968 and 1970 he conducted in Moscow, Leningrad, and Riga. He has appeared as a guest conductor in many Canadian and US cities. During his years in Canada Mueller conducted the premieres of several Canadian works including Pyknon (MSO, 1966) and Diallèle (TS, 1968) by André Prévost, the Symphony-Concerto (TS, 1968) of S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatté, and the Symphony No. 2 (Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, 1977) of Malcolm Forsyth. During the summer of 1978 he conducted the second session of the OJQ at the JMC Orford Art Centre. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, at the Yale School of Music in New Have, at the Juilliard School of New York and at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

See also Discographies for MSO; Zara Nelsova; the Orchestre métropolitain.

Author Gilles Potvin