František Neumann

He spent a year in voluntary military service at Olomouc, then joined his father's smoked meat business.

[1] His serious music studies commenced in 1896 at the Leipzig Conservatory under Carl Reinecke and Salomon Jadassohn, and continued under Felix Mottl in Karlsruhe, where he worked as chorus master at the local theatre.

In his first season 1919-20 he introduced regular subscription concerts, and he brought a much needed discipline to the fledgling organisation.

He also conducted the first performance in Czechoslovakia of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande,[2] and new works by Vítězslav Novák and Otakar Ostrčil.

His students included Zdeněk Chalabala[3] and Břetislav Bakala, who conducted the premiere of From the House of the Dead in 1930, after Neumann's death.