Carl Schuricht

[1] At 20 he obtained the post of Korrepetitor at the Stadttheater in Mainz, and two years later won the Kuczynski Foundation prize for composition and a Felix Mendelssohn scholarship.

He then returned to Berlin to study piano under Ernst Rudorff and composition with Engelbert Humperdinck, later working under Max Reger in Leipzig, publishing chamber pieces, sonatas and lieder.

Attracted by the profession of conductor he undertook tours in Germany conducting operettas, operas, choral societies and symphony concerts.

As music director in Wiesbaden (1920-1944) he arranged the first German "Gustav Mahler-Festival" in April 1921, conducting Mahler's symphonies Nos.

Mahler's works were very popular in Germany, Holland and Austria during the 1920s, but were eventually banned under the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 owing to the composer's Jewish origin.

On October 5, 1939, during the so-called Phony War, his conducting with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde was disrupted by a woman heckler who called out "Deutschland über alles, Herr Schuricht!"

[5] When the Vienna Philharmonic first toured the US, in 1956, Schuricht replaced the recently deceased Erich Kleiber, sharing the conducting during the six weeks with André Cluytens.