Register for ourKestenberg was in contact with the leading artists, educators and scholars of his time. As a music consultant, he did much to contribute to the fabled glamour of Berlin's "Golden Twenties" by appointing many such individuals to important positions in schools and cultural institutions.
He was a friend of the composers Busoni, Schönberg, Krenek and Hindemith, the conductors Furtwängler and Klemperer, of music educators such as Eberhard Preussner, Charlotte Pfeffer and of the soloists Arthur Schnabel, Egon Petri and Tilla Durieux, of visual artists such as Ernst Barlach and Oskar Kokoschka and of the scientists Alfred and Albert Einstein.
In the appointments he made during the Berlin period, Kestenberg showed himself to be extremely courageous, clever and progressive. He made decisions based on the candidates' professional and personal qualifications, without regard to their political views and the associated advantages or disadvantages for himself. Kestenberg did not hesitate to hire very different, even opposing music personalities for leading positions, and clearly had a certain willingness to take risks.
For example, he appointed the then celebrated opera composer Franz Schreker to be the director of the Academy of Music and designated his polar opposite, Georg Schünemann, the well known, always moderate musicologist and music critic, as Schreker's deputy.
The appointment of the controversial violist, avant-garde composer and theoretician Paul Hindemith to the Academy of Music also signified a risk. It caused a sensation, attracting and making its mark on an upcoming generation of younger composers.
At the Berlin Academy of the Arts, Kestenberg brought in the no less famous, even mythologized, pianist, composer and music aesthetician Ferruccio Busoni to hold master classes. Immediately, he confronted Busoni with his conservative antithesis and sharpest critic, Hans Pfitzner, the German nationalist composer of the opera Palestrina. After Busoni's death, Kestenberg appointed Arnold Schönberg to be his successor. As a composer and theoretician of twelve-tone music and serial composition, Schönberg was among the most radical and influential innovators of modern music.
Kestenberg's courageous willingness to take risks also was demonstrated in his recruitment of the co-founder and central figure of the Jugendmusikbewegung [youth music movement], Fritz Jöde, an elementary school teacher, and of the still relatively unknown reform music educator Heinrich Martens. Both were named professors at the Academy for Church and School Music.
Also warranting mention: the appointment of the pianist Artur Schnabel whose new, more sober aesthetic of piano playing was diametrically opposite to the style Kestenberg embodied, to the Academy of Music; and the appointment of the young conductor Otto Klemperer to be the musical director of the Kroll Opera (1927-31). It was Klemperer who for years blamed Kestenberg, then regarded as "omnipotent", for the failure of this project.
Additionally, Furtwängler was named chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic during Kestenberg's time in office.
Even from the viewpoint of women's emancipation, Kestenberg's appointments proved to be progressive. At the Seminar for Music Education that he established at the Berlin Academy of Music, he hired a considerable number (for those days) of innovative female music teachers including: Frieda Loebenstein, Charlotte Pfeffer, Charlotte Schlesinger and Susanne Trautwein.
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