American conductor Lorin Maazel died on July 13, 2014. His conducting took him around the world. According to his website, he served as “Artistic Director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and General Manager of the Vienna State Opera, as Music Director of the Radio Symphony of Berlin, the Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic.”
To honor Maazel, the Münchner Philharmoniker, the Philharmonische Chor München, and the Bayerische Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra and Choir joined forces in a rare event to perform Brahms’s “Deutsches Requiem.” Valery Gergiev conducted. Maazel was Chefdirigent of the BR orchestra and choir from 1993-2012 and led the Munich Philharmonic from 2012 until shortly before his death. The concert is available to view online: http://br.de/s/1Hicdix
Obituaries:
New York Times, The Telegraph, Die Zeit, Le Monde
Below is Maazel in a performance from the 1960s in which he conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Mozart’s Violin Concerto K.216 and plays the solo part himself:
As a composer, he wrote chamber music and also an opera based on George Orwell’s 1984. Below, watch him conduct the overture from this opera (premiered in 2005):
Image: “Maazel 08” by Barbara Haws via Wikimedia Commons
