Friedrich Hegar

Friedrich Hegar (11 October 1841 – 2 June 1927) was a Swiss violinist, conductor, and composer. He was born in Basel and died in Zurich, and was the brother of Emil Hegar.

He graduated from the Leipzig Conservatory in 1860, studying with teachers including Moritz Hauptmann, Ferdinand David, Ernst Friedrich Eduard Richter, and Julius Rietz. He then worked as a conductor in Warsaw as an assistant to Benjamin Bilse, and later in Guebwiller as an assistant to Julius Stockhausen.

From 1863 he lived and worked in Zurich. He led a musical ensemble that in 1868 was reorganized as the Tonhalle Orchestra, and he remained its chief conductor until 1906. He also founded the Zurich Mixed Choir, and was among the founders of the Zurich Conservatory in 1875, where he taught until 1914.

In 1900 Hegar directed the first Swiss Music Festival. As a composer he wrote the oratorio "Manasseh", violin and cello concertos, a string quartet, and various vocal and choral works.

Hegar was a friend of Johannes Brahms and frequently performed Brahms's music; Brahms also became godfather to Hegar's son, the cellist Johannes Hegar. On 12 September 1868, the Tonhalle Orchestra under Hegar gave the first performance of the fifth movement of Brahms's "A German Requiem", newly added to a work that had already been performed.

Among the gifts presented to Hegar in 1906 for his honorary retirement from the orchestra was Brahms's autograph manuscript score of the Fourth Symphony, which Hegar and his orchestra had successfully performed in 1887. After Hegar's death, the manuscript was inherited by the Central Library of Zurich.

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