Henri Verbrugghen

Henri Adrien Marie Verbrugghen ( born August 1, 1873 in Brussels, † November 12, 1934 in Northfield / Minnesota) was a Belgian violinist, conductor and music educator.

Verbrugghen already occurred at the age of eight years as a violinist and studied from 1886 to 1889 at the Brussels Conservatory with Jenő Hubay, Eugène Ysaÿe By 1888 he undertook a journey to England. From 1893 he was a member of the Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow Company, since 1903 the Frederic Hymen Cowen concertmaster under. In the summer time he stepped in Llandudno on with an orchestra under Jules Riviere, for three years he was also a member of the Concerts Lamoureux. With the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he joined in 1899 under the direction of Henry Wood on. With this, he worked from 1903 for three seasons together as concertmaster in the summer promenade concerts at the Queen's Hall Orchestra in London.

Besides taught Verbrugghen violin, chamber and orchestral music at the Athenaeum in Glasgow and in 1904 was the violin professor at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. Since 1903, he has performed with its own string quartet, and in 1907 he played the British premiere of Jean Sibelius ' Violin Concerto. In 1911 he became conductor of the Glasgow Choral Union and entered into the next few years as a conductor in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, and St. Petersburg.

1915 he was appointed Ambrose Carmichael five years as director of the newly established New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music in Sydney, where Roland Foster, Alfred Hill, Frank Hutchens, Cyril Monk and Arundel Orchard were among his employees. He himself taught chamber music, gave 24 concerts annually with his string quartet and founded a symphony orchestra, with whom he performed concerts in Melbourne, Adelaide and New Zealand.

1922 Verbrugghen went to the USA where he spent nine years as successor to Emil Oberhoffer the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted. In 1931 he suffered a stroke, after which he had to give up his Dirigententätgkeit. From 1933 until his death he headed the Music Department of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. In the center of the repertoire Verbrugghens was the work of Ludwig van Beethoven, which earned him the reputation of a Beethoven conductor par excellence.