Frieder Weissmann

At the outbreak of the First World War, he took the first step towards a conducting career and became répétiteur under Ludwig Rottenberg at the Frankfurt Opera (1914/16).

In 1920, he was awarded a doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy at Munich University with a dissertation on the composer Georg Abraham Schneider (1770-1839).

This was followed in 1921 by an engagement as répétiteur and conductor at the Berlin State Opera, where he worked under Max von Schillings and Erich Kleiber until 1924.

In 1929, he married his long-time fiancée, the German soprano Meta Seinemeyer, who, seriously ill with leukaemia, died a few hours after the wedding ceremony.

[7] He left Germany in June 1933 for the Netherlands, where he performed with the Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam and the Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep orchestra.

This was followed by six-month stays - alternating with the Netherlands - in Argentina from 1934 to 1937, where he gave concerts in Buenos Aires Radio Splendid and at the Teatro Colón.

[8] As successor to Artur Rodziński, he took over the direction of the Orquesta Filarmónica de La Habana in Havana, Cuba, from 1950 to 1953.

In parallel to his permanent engagements, Weissmann was very active as a guest conductor in the US, Canada (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver), Mexico and the Netherlands from 1945 onwards.

His repertoire was extremely broad and included operetta and light classical music as well as the major works of symphonic literature.

[12] He accompanied the cellist Emanuel Feuermann on Max Bruch's Kol Nidrei[13] and the pianists Moriz Rosenthal and Karol Szreter[14] on their recordings of Chopin's Piano Concerto No.