On Thursday, July 17, 2014 at 1:40:29 PM UTC-10, Frank Forman wrote:
> Lorin Maazel, conductor and composer, dies aged 84
> http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/13/lorin-maazel-conductor-composer-dies-aged-84
>
> Lorin Maazel, one of the most high-achieving and highly paid
> orchestral conductors of the past half-century, died on Sunday at
> his home in Virginia in the United States, after suffering
> complications from pneumonia. He was 84.
>
> Maazel was music director of a gallery of top orchestras in Europe
> and the United States - including Cleveland, Paris and Munich - for
> more than 40 years, and had been chief conductor of opera houses in
> West Berlin and Vienna too. His last major post was as music
> director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 2001- 2009,
> during which he led the orchestra on a controversial and ground
> breaking visit to Pyongyang, North Korea.
>
> In Britain his principal connections were with the Philharmonia
> Orchestra, of which he was an associate principal conductor from
> 1971. Maazel continued to conduct the Philharmonia until the end of
> his life. His last concerts with the orchestra were in London in
> March. The orchestra tweeted last night that it was "devastated" by
> the news of Maazel's death.
>
> Born in France in 1930 to Jewish American parents, Maazel was
> brought up in the United States, where he became a famous child
> prodigy. By his 11th birthday he had already shared a podium with
> Leopold Stokowski, while the no less legendary Arturo Toscanini was
> responsible for getting Maazel his first steady conducting job in
> 1942, when Maazel was only 12.
>
> A talented violinist, Maazel was briefly a member of the Fine Arts
> Quartet and of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He gave violin
> recitals throughout his career and wrote for the instrument. His
> conducting career was littered with firsts, most notably as the
> first American to be invited to conduct at the annual Wagner
> festival in Bayreuth, where he first conducted in 1960.
>
> Maazel had a long association with Vienna, where he had a brief and
> stormy period in charge of the Vienna state opera, and with the
> Vienna Philharmonic, whose annual new years' day concert he directed
> regularly in the 1980s, returning for the last time in 2009.
>
> Never a musician to hide his light under a bushel, Maazel tried hard
> to succeed Herbert von Karajan as chief conductor of the Berlin
> Philharmonic Orchestra when the long Karajan reign came to an end in
> 1989. The orchestra's choice of the late Claudio Abbado was a huge
> blow.
>
> Maazel was a composer as well as a conductor, writing an opera based
> on George Orwell's 1984 that was performed, under his own direction,
> at Covent Garden and the New York Metropolitan, to generally
> lukewarm reviews.

(Recent Y. upload):

Preview: The Mysterious Maestro Maazel