Fritz Reiner

Reiner was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary into a secular Jewish family that resided in the Pest area of the city.

After early engagements at opera houses in Budapest and Dresden (June 1914 to November 1921), where he worked closely with Richard Strauss, he moved to the United States in 1922 to take the post of Principal Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, where he remained until 1931.

[6] Some of his pupils included Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, Max Goberman, Boris Goldovsky, Walter Hendl, Sylvan Levin, Henry Mazer, Howard Mitchell, Vincent Persichetti, Ezra Rachlin, Nino Rota, Felix Slatkin, Ethel Stark, and Hugo Weisgall.

He then spent several years at the Metropolitan Opera, where he conducted a historic production of Richard Strauss's Salome in 1949, with the Bulgarian soprano Ljuba Welitsch in the title role,[11] and the American premiere of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress in 1951.

In 1947, Reiner appeared on camera in the film Carnegie Hall, in which he conducted the New York Philharmonic as they accompanied violinist Jascha Heifetz in an abbreviated version of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.

[14] Ten years later, Heifetz and Reiner recorded the full Tchaikovsky concerto in stereo for RCA Victor in Chicago.

[1][20] On November 11, 1963, while preparing for performances of Götterdämmerung at the Metropolitan Opera, Reiner became afflicted by bronchitis, which developed into pneumonia.

[citation needed] Reiner's conducting technique was noted for its precision and economy, in the manner of Arthur Nikisch and Arturo Toscanini.

[2] Igor Stravinsky called the Chicago Symphony under Reiner "the most precise and flexible orchestra in the world"; it was more often than not achieved with tactics that bordered on the personally abusive, as Kenneth Morgan documents in 2005 biography of the conductor.