London Symphony Orchestra & Antal Doráti
Biography London Symphony Orchestra & Antal Doráti
Antal Doráti
The conductor and composer Antal Doráti was born in Budapest on 9 April 1906 and made his debut as a conductor in 1924. This made the eighteen-year-old graduate the youngest conductor in the history of the Budapest Opera House. At the same time, he was a composition pupil of Zoltán Kodály. In 1928, Fritz Busch invited him to Dresden as his assistant. This led to an engagement at the opera house in Münster/Westphalia in 1929, which lasted until 1933. From 1934 to 1941, he was first second conductor and later music director of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and then of the American Ballet Theatre in New York. His American debut as a symphonic conductor took place in 1937 in Washington D.C. with the National Symphony Orchestra. He became an American citizen in 1947. From 1945 to 1949, he led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which he had rebuilt. In 1949 he was elected music director in Minneapolis.
From 1963, he was head of the BBC Orchestra for 4 years, and at the same time (from 1965 - 1972) of the Stockholm Philharmonic. In 1970 he became music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C. His last two chief positions were with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London from 1975 and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1977. These two orchestras and the Stockholm Philharmonic appointed him ‘Conductor Laureate’ for life at the end of his respective contracts.
Doráti's influence on the music world was unusually great, not only as a conductor. As a composer, he left behind an impressive oeuvre, which is increasingly being performed around the world.
He died on 13 November 1988 in Gerzensee, where he lived in Switzerland.
