BRENDAN WEHRUNG'S HOME PAGE: hobby interests, including
CLASSICAL MUSIC (Historic conductors, Electronic links) and
GENEALOGY (including
ENSMINGER, LIEDEL and WEHRUNG families.)
The following has been compiled by Brendan R. Wehrung,
who wishes to offer information to people who share his interests. Geocities, which provides free web space, may insert an ad when a page is called for. In such cases, ignore the ad (do not touch it with the cursor) and it will shrink in size after a few seconds.
Comments or suggestions should be directed to him at any of the
mail links found on the various pages.
Welcome to my hobbies!
I'm great believer in the power classical music, and those who
make it for us.
A great deal of heated discussion is to be found on the news
groups rec.music.classical and rec.music.classical.recordings
about the merits of this or that conductor, but only a few of
the maestros mentioned on either group were active during the
first half of this century--the period during which the Romantic
age was transformed into what we view as contemporary culture.
I developed an interest in "historic" conductors when I realized
that, whatever the limitations of earlier recording technology,
performances preserved on 78's and early tape were often more
interesting, more exciting and--yes--more satisfying than most
recorded since. As others have observed, the difference is
personality, the mind and heart of the conductor expressed
through his orchestra. To those used to the interpretively
neutral ethos that replaced the age of great conducting, the
results may on occasion seem odd or mannered, but in striving
to reach the very heart of the music they led, great conductors
such as Sir Thomas Beecham, Willem Mengelberg or Leopold
Stokowski (to name three I admire excessively) created legacies
that our time should and must heed.
This page offers a way to access sites offering information on several great maestros of the past.
I have assembled a complete list of compact disc recordings by
SIR THOMAS BEECHAM, information and
a CD discography of Holland's greatest conductor,
WILLEM MENGELBERG, and a further
Historic Conductor lists page where you
will find CD discographies of Sir Eugéne Goossens and
Paul Paray. Others have done the same for their particular
favorites. You may be interested in visiting a
site devoted to recordings of the great and still controversial German conductor,
WILHELM FURTWAENGLER, or the home page of the
Wilhelm Furtwaengler Society
of America A society has also been created in the
name of the revered mid-century conductor of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra
SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY. Finally, I invite you to follow a link to the revived
LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI Society of America (which includes an
interpretive discography) and its Internet magazine,
Maestrino. Meanwhile, the
Leopold Stokowski Society of the United Kingdom continues to flourish, and invites a visit. They offer Cds, produced in cooperation with CALA Records.
The above pages (and many more) may also be accessed via my conductor societies and discography pages
There has been much commentary of late about the health (or supposed ill-health) of the classical music portion of the music industry. Let's face it, unless a company makes a profit when they sell something–they won't (sell it). Therefore, I urge those interested in what's in these pages to support your classical music resources, be they symphony, radio station, record label, or store. I live in an area with a marvelous orchestra, no local classical radio (not even NPRclassical programming), a distressing situation not mitigated by the presence of Tower Records, which keeps cutting back their stock. On October 4, 2003 we lost one of the midwest's best resources, an all-clasical stores, the blame going to Internet ordering and downloading. I don't buy the argument, but if you have a local store, patronize it, or you will lose it.
Consult compilations of
classical music reviews. Unfortunately, the online version of Fanfare magazine no longer exists, but if you don't mind a three-month delay, you can visit a rather crowded display of
past reviews from
Gramophone magazine.
Further interesting classical music sites are
listed at the end of this page.
Some family surname lines have been thoroughly researched and
documented, while others, although having a good number of living
North American representatives, have had little published about
them. This section calls attention to links to two families
which identifiably were first found about 1600 in the
northwest corner of the ancient province of Alsace,
in in the portion today known as the Department of
Bas-Rhin, France. Specifically, information on the origins of the
WEHRUNG
and ENSMINGER surnames of what is
known as Alsace Bossue (or crooked Alsace), because
the boundaries hook into what was once the duchy of Lorraine
(now the Department of Moselle, France), can be found
by clicking on the surnames, which incidentally were those of
the parents of my great great grandfather, who left France in
1871. For a more general look at the area its genealogical
resources, try Robert Behra's
The Communities of Alsace A-Z site. He includes a number
of useful links.
My father was born in the village Maybee, MI, which is not
too far from the city of Monroe. His mother's line established
in the area in 1847, and I have done a fair amount of research
on the LIEDEL family, which is still
well-known in the Monroe area. Again, click on the surname if
you wish to know more.
Finally, if you have ancestors from western Michigan in your family
line (Ionia or Kalamazoo counties), and would like to know
about mine, click here for
information on my mother's family lines, which include CHOATE,
ECKERT, FIX, MEGINLEY, and NOELDNER.
Links to other sites on the Web
ClassicalNet:
Links to composer data, musical societies and much more, at the new address.
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