Lorin Maazel

Lorin Maazel first conducted in public at eight and appeared with most of the leading American orchestras before he was sixteen. Born in Paris in 1930 and raised in the United States, he began on the violin at five. His posts ran from the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Cleveland Orchestra to the Vienna State Opera — the first American to direct it — the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Munich Philharmonic. He made more than three hundred recordings. He composed as well, including the opera 1984 after Orwell, and in 2009 founded the Castleton Festival in Virginia with his wife, Dietlinde Turban Maazel, where young singers and players worked on full productions. He died in 2014. His early training was with Vladimir Bakaleinikoff, and it was at Toscanini's invitation that he first stood in front of the NBC Symphony. He held the Bavarian Radio orchestra from 1993 to 2002, conducting with it the first performance of Penderecki's Seven Gates of Jerusalem in 1997, and 1984 was first staged at the Royal Opera House.