Erich Leinsdorf

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/12/obituaries/erich-leinsdorf-81-a-c...

Erich Leinsdorf, 81, a Conductor of Intelligence and Utility, Is Dead By BERNARD HOLLAND Published: September 12, 1993

Erich Leinsdorf, a conductor whose abrasive intelligence and deep musical learning served as a conscience for two generations of conductors, died yesterday at a hospital in Zurich. He was 81 years old and lived in Zurich and Sarasota, Fla., and until recently also had a home in Manhattan.

The cause was cancer, his family said.

Mr. Leinsdorf's utilitarian stage manner and his disdain of dramatic effects for their own sake stood out as a not-so-silent rebuke to his colleagues in this most glamorous of all musical jobs.

In addition, Mr. Leinsdorf -- in rehearsal, in the press and in his valuable book on conducting, "The Composer's Advocate" -- never tired of pointing out gaps in culture among musicians, faulty editing among music publishers and errors in judgment or acts of ignorance among his fellow conductors. He rarely named his victims, but his messages and their targets were often clear. Moreover, he usually had the solid grasp of facts to support his contentions.

His long career continued until early this year, when his health deteriorated. After conducting the New York Philharmonic in January, he was forced to cancel performances the next month. Help From Toscanini

Mr. Leinsdorf moved to this country from Vienna in 1937. Helped by the recommendation of Arturo Toscanini, whom he had been assisting at the Salzburg Festival, Mr. Leinsdorf made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera a year later with "Die Walkure." He was 25 years old at the time. A year later he was made overseer of the Met's German repertory, and his contentious style -- in particular an insistence on textual accuracy and more rehearsal -- won him no friends among singers like Lauritz Melchior and Kirsten Flagstad. Backed by management, he remained at the Met until 1943.

At the New York City Opera, where he became music director in 1956, Mr. Leinsdorf's demanding policies in matters of repertory and preparation made him further enemies, and he left a year later.

His searches for permanent employment turned mostly to orchestras. After the briefest of tenures at the Cleveland Orchestra during World War II, Mr. Leinsdorf took over the Rochester Philharmonic and stayed for nine years. During that period, he and the orchestra made a series of admired low-budget recordings that brought Rochester to the music world's attention.

Mr. Leinsdorf's last and most prestigious music directorship was at the Boston Symphony, where he replaced Charles Munch in 1962. No contrast in style could have been sharper: Munch had viewed conducting mystically, as a kind of priesthood; Mr. Leinsdorf's policy was to make performances work in the clearest and most rational way. Cool Objectivity

Observers both in and out of the orchestra could not deny the benefits of Mr. Leinsdorf's discipline, but there were some who were hostile to what they perceived as an objectivity that could hardly be called heartwarming. Perhaps his principal achievements with the Boston Symphony were not in Boston but at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he presided over the orchestra's summer season in the Berkshires.

There Mr. Leinsdorf introduced 32 works, including Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem," and began a Prokofiev cycle. He also worked closely with Tanglewood's conducting students.

The administrative and social burdens of the music director's job became increasingly onerous to him, however, and not enjoying total enthusiasm from the press, he stepped down after the 1968-69 season. "Only six years earlier," he remarked at the time, "I had been overjoyed at being asked to a position considered one of the most prestigious in my profession, and now I could only hope to get out with my health intact."

Subsequently, Mr. Leinsdorf found happiness as a guest conductor, touring the world's major orchestras, working with them for several weeks at a time and avoiding the burdens of a permanent position. Although his performances were rarely dramatic or even rousing, he brought to music a kind of rectitude that at its best provided an antidote for orchestra musicians and listeners used to flamboyant and often empty conductorial salesmanship.

One American orchestra manager a few years ago responded to musicians' grumblings over Mr. Leinsdorf's rehearsal manner by saying that he was "good for my orchestra." And so he probably was. Played for Webern

Erich Leinsdorf was born in Vienna on Feb. 4, 1912, to Ludwig Julius and Charlotte Loebl Leinsdorf. His father, an amateur pianist, died when Mr. Leinsdorf was 3 years old. Mr. Leinsdorf was already a good pianist by age 7. As a teen-ager he studied the cello, musical theory and composition at the University of Vienna and at the city's Music Academy. He was a rehearsal pianist for Anton Webern when that most ascetic of composers was conductor of a chorus known as the Singverein der Sozialdemokratischen Kunstelle; there he made his professional piano debut in a performance of "Les Noces" by Stravinsky.

Aside from the early Rochester recordings, Mr. Leinsdorf recorded extensively for the RCA label, including full operas, all the Mozart symphonies, other items from the standard repertory, and modern works by Elliott Carter, Alberto Ginastera and others.

Mr. Leinsdorf's first marriage, to Anne Frohnknecht, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife of 25 years, the former Vera Graf, and five children from his first marriage: David I. of Crested Butte, Col., Gregor J. of Manhattan, Joshua F. of Atlantic Highlands, N.J., Deborah Hester Reik of Hartford, Jennifer G. Belok of Belmont, Mass., and 10 grandchildren.

Photo: Erich Leinsdorf conducting at Carnegie Hall in 1987. (Steve J. Sherman)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Leinsdorf

Erich Leinsdorf (born Erich Landauer) (February 4, 1912 – September 11, 1993) was an Austrian-born American conductor.[1] He performed and recorded with leading orchestras and opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, earning a reputation for exacting standards as well as an acerbic personality.[2] He also published books and essays on musical matters.

Biography[edit] Leinsdorf was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, and was studying music at a local school by the age of 5. He played the cello and studied composition. In his teens, Leinsdorf worked as a piano accompanist for singers. He studied conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and later at the University of Vienna and the Vienna Academy of Music. From 1934 to 1937 he worked as an assistant to the noted conductors Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini at the Salzburg Festival.

In November 1937, Leinsdorf travelled to the United States to take up a position as assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. As it turned out, his departure from Austria came a few short months ahead of the Anschluss of March 1938, when the country was taken over by Nazi Germany. With the assistance of freshman Representative from Texas Lyndon B. Johnson,[3] he was able to stay in the United States, and became a naturalized American citizen in 1942.[1]

At the Met Leinsdorf was particularly noted for his Wagner performances; after the sudden death of Artur Bodanzky in 1939, he was named the Met's "head of German repertoire".[1][4] From 1943 he had a brief three-year post as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra, but was absent for much of this tenure because he was drafted into the United States Armed Forces for World War II; the orchestra did not renew Leinsdorf's contract. Many years later, in the transition in Cleveland from Lorin Maazel to Christoph von Dohnányi between 1982 and 1984, Leinsdorf returned to lead several concerts; Leinsdorf described his role as "the bridge between the regimes".[4]

Leinsdorf was the principal conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra from 1947 to 1955. He came to despair of what he saw as Rochester's insular musical culture, famously remarking that "Rochester is the best disguised dead end in the world!" Subsequently he was briefly head of the New York City Opera, before resuming his association with the Met.[1] In 1962 he was named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His time in Boston would produce many recordings for RCA, but was also marked by controversy, as he occasionally clashed with musicians and administrators.[2]

On November 22, 1963, during a Boston Symphony concert, Leinsdorf had to announce the reports of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas to a shocked audience. He and the orchestra followed the news with a performance of the Funeral March from Beethoven's third symphony.[5] In 1969 Leinsdorf left the Boston post. He would continue to guest-conduct operas and orchestras around the world for the next two decades, being particularly associated with the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. He also served from 1978 to 1980 as principal conductor of the (West) Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.[2] He died of cancer in Zürich, Switzerland, at the age of 81.

His notable students include John Ferritto.[citation needed]

Leinsdorf is also known for his arrangement of a suite from Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande.

Recordings[edit] Leinsdorf made numerous recordings throughout his career, including some 78-rpm discs for Columbia Records with the Cleveland Orchestra. He made a number of recordings with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Capitol. In the 1950s, he was conductor for a series of complete stereophonic opera recordings made in Rome, beginning with Puccini's Tosca with Zinka Milanov, Jussi Björling, and Leonard Warren for RCA Victor. He continued to record for RCA as music director of the Boston Symphony. Later he again made additional operatic recordings, including the first complete stereo recording of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die tote Stadt, with Carol Neblett and René Kollo. Leinsdorf conducted the BSO with pianist Arthur Rubinstein in pianist's second complete recording of Beethoven's piano concertos, Brahms' First Piano Concerto, and Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto.

On DVD Vienna Symphony conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, Johann Strauß: Famous Works, Silverline Classics in Dolby Digital, 2003 Television[edit] Leinsdorf with the BSO appeared regularly on local broadcasts from WGBH-TV. On August 17, 1967, Leinsdorf conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a two-hour primetime special telecast in color on NBC, a reflection of the days when a commercial network would periodically broadcast a full-length classical concert. The program, entitled An Evening at Tanglewood, featured violinist Itzhak Perlman as guest soloist.[6]

Quotes[edit] “ Ladies and gentlemen, we have a press report over the wires – we hope that it is unconfirmed, but we have to doubt it – that the President of the United States has been the victim of an assassination. (loud gasps of shock from the audience) We will play the Funeral March from Beethoven's Third Symphony. ” —Erich Leinsdorf informing the audience at a BSO performance at Symphony Hall and over WGBH radio of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Leinsdorf