Conductors Archive

My personal view is that Carlos Kleiber was the greatest orchestral and Opera conductor of the past 100 years. He did not shout or curse the musicians as did Toscanini. Kleiber was demanding, of course. …

Jean Sibelius’ D-minor Violin Concerto towers as an icy summit in the instrument’s literature. But Sibelius and the violin are connected in other ways, too. He aspired to become a violin virtuoso himself but unfortunately …

Orchestral conductor Herbert Blomstedt was born July 11, 1927. As such, he is 94 years old and still quite active as a musician. Born in the USA to Swedish parents and educated in Uppsala, New …

The Symphony No. 1 in D Major by composer Gustav Mahler, was originally known as “Titan”. The work was considered unusually grand and ambitious for the late 1800’s, especially for a composer who was then …

Johannes Brahms composed the Fourth Symphony during the summers of 1884–85 in Mürzzuschlag, Austria, his summer retreat in the mountains southwest of Vienna. In September 1885, Brahms wrote to Hans von Bülow, conductor of the …