Fricsay was born in Budapest in 1914 and studied music under Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernst von Dohnányi, and Leó Weiner.

With these and other faculty at the Budapest Academy of Music he studied piano, violin, clarinet, trombone, percussion, composition and conducting.

[1] Fricsay made his first appearance as a conductor at age 15, substituting for his father at the podium of the Young Musicians Orchestra of Budapest.

[2] When the Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944, the chief editor of the Szeged daily newspaper warned Fricsay that the Gestapo planned to arrest him; he and his wife, Marta (née Telbisz) and three children Marta, Ferenc and Andras, avoided this fate by going underground in Budapest.

His grandson Dominic-Ferenc Dobay (1972-1992), his first wife Martha Fricsay-Telbisz (1915-1997) and Herta Stein (1912-2005) were buried in the same site as well.

He led the inauguration of the rebuilt Deutsche Oper Berlin with a performance of Don Giovanni on 24 September 1961.