Walter Guetter
Julius Walter Guetter played bassoon in the Philadelphia Orchestra 36 years ago. At the height of his career, when he was 42, he died of cancer. His playing is lost in the old 78's, on records not readily available today.
Born in Philadelphia, April 17, 1895, Walter went to Berlin at the age of 15 to study bassoon for four years with his uncle, Adolf Guetter.
In 1914 the 19-year-old Guetter came home, a very young bassoonist looking for a job. Leopold Stokowski, who was then building the Philadelphia Orchestra into the great virtuoso instrument which it became, said, "I heard Walter Guetter for the first time when he was a young man just growing out of boyhood. I was struck with his great gifts as a Fagottist, and took him immediately into the orchestra."
Guetter did not stay. Feeling that his age was handicapping his advancement in the section, he resigned.
At Willow Grove Park, where the Chicago Symphony played concerts in the summer season, Walter auditioned for Frederick Stock. Stock said to his manager, "Mr. Ulrich, I want this young man in Chicago next season. "Ulrich replied, "We already have our first contracted." Stock went on, "Engage him as third bassoon, assistant first, and I will take care of the rest." Walter was hired and in the midst of the 1915-16 season he became first bassoonist of the Chicago Symphony .
In 1922 Guetter rejoined the Philadelphia Orchestra as first bassoon. Thus that formidable trio of first chair men in the woodwind section was established: Kincaid, Tabuteau, and Guetter -- flute, oboe, and bassoon. These three were to play together for 15 years.
What sort of person was Walter Guetter? Did a ruthless ego stand behind that masterful embouchure and those skilled hands? Actually, according to Ferdinand Del Negro, a fellow-player. "He set a pattern of comradeship in the section that was the envy of other sections. If the conductor began picking on a weaker man, he would call a huddle and rearrange our music so as to cover up the weakness of our colleague, thus saving him from dismissal."
Leopold Stokowski said, "During rehearsals he never spoke a word, but spoke so eloquently with his instrument. When he came in he made me a little bow, and when he came out, another little bow, and he taught me many things. One is that a good artist speaks with his instrument, and does not have to talk otherwise.
Guetter appeared a number of times as soloist with the orchestra. One notable occasion was the performance, in 1934, of the Mozart Concerto, for which Guetter had written his own cadenzas. Thinking of his wife Elsa, who was in the audience, he remarked to Kincaid, "I'll bet she is more nervous than I am." No one need have worried, for it went off very well. Later a bassoon and piano version of the score, edited by him and containing his cadenzas, was printed privately.
Of Walter Guetter the man, Eugene Ormandy said, "I had ample opportunity to admire him for the great artist that he was, but he was more than that -- he was a great human being. He felt that his duty to the orchestra came first and his health second. The day before his last concert in New York I begged his wife not to let him go because I was sure that he would not live through the concert. But she said, "If that is what he wants to do please let him do it." She knew she couldn't hold him back anyway. There was an important bassoon solo in the program and he just had to be there, that is all there was to it."
"As a teacher," said Frank Ruggieri, a pupil, "he taught his students to strive for perfection, especially in acquiring a wonderful singing tone in all registers of the bassoon. He was very meticulous regarding intonation, dynamics, rhythm, articulation, and most important, phrasing."
The heart of Guetter's greatness as a player was his tone, and few passages exemplify it better than the opening of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. In 1929 Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra recorded this for Victor, issued as album M-74. It opens with the rather long, partly unaccompanied bassoon solo in the thin upper register -- perhaps a calculated sacrifice of the bassoonist to set the mood for the whole work.
It was precisely in this range of the instrument that Guetter's tone was incredibly strong. Under Stokowski's baton he followed the eerie line of the solo, adding the spell of his own transcendent tone, until it seemed that the conductor had evoked some ancient voice of sorcery to herald the beginning of the work.
In Stravinsky's Firebird, recorded in 1935 (Victor album M-291), Guetter played the long solo in the Berceuse. On these dreamy, melodic lines Stokowski placed the stamp of Guetter's tone, warm and nostalgic, singing easily over the background of the orchestra.
One of Walter's most memorable recorded solos was a phrase scarcely three bars long. It occurs in the second movement of Tschaikovsky's Fifth Symphony (Victor album M-253, recorded in 1934). First stated by the clarinet, the theme is repeated by the bassoon. It is an effective clarinet solo, not easy to equal on the bassoon. But when Guetter took up the phrase with his great tone, he gave it such a soaring quality that the clarinet was more than equaled.
Legends are apt to build up in the wake of great players. There was a story that Guetter made his reeds with the knife only, the implication being that he was so skillful that reed making was no trouble for him. In truth, like any bassoonist, he used all the conventional tools, and like others he fought the battle of the reed his whole career. His cousin, Hans Moennig, told of the difficulties Guetter had on his last tour with the orchestra, when the reed which sounded good in one city would not work at another stop, and the pressure of concerts and travel left him too little time work on reeds.
His illness, starting with a little indigestion, began to take an increasing portion of his energy, and the pressure on him mounted. On May 1, 1937, Walter Guetter died.
Stokowski said to the orchestra, "We have lost the Heifitz of the bassoon."
A Discography of recordings by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski including prominent solos played by Walter Guetter: (Guetter made no solo recordings) .
Dr. Jack Phelan is a physician who plays clarinet on a non-professional basis. He has a deep interest in woodwinds of all types, with a particular concern for the tone quality of individual players. This article is printed from The Instrumentalist, March, 1967. Used by permission of The Instrumentalist Co. and the author.
W. Hans Moennig, Walter Guetter's first cousin and the most famous woodwind repair/artisan in North America, has sent this brief note on the life of Walter Guetter
" Walter Guetter came to his fine talent on the bassoon somewhat by inheritance. His uncle, Adolf Guetter, who had studied on a scholarship with J. Weissenborn in Leipzig, played 1st bassoon with the Boston Symphony under Nikisch in the 1890's; afterwards playing first with the Royal Opera in Berlin and teaching there at the Hochschule für Musik. Walter's father, a well-known violin maker in Philadelphia, would have liked to teach him that honorable trade, but Walter's vision on the bassoon won out and so happily on to Berlin, and luckily, too, he finished his studies just in time before World War I broke out."
The photo of Guetter shown here was also contributed by W. Hans Moennig).