He conducted at venues in Bologna in Italy, and Grant Park, in Illinois as well as the Metropolitan Opera.

He enjoyed a friendship with conductor Leonard Bernstein and also worked alongside conductors Herbert von Karajan, Bruno Walter and William Steinberg in music festivals around the world.

Rich is known particularly as the first conductor of the Fourth Piano Concerto by Sergei Prokofiev, together with one-handed pianist Siegfried Rapp (Berlin, 1956).

Besides being a symphonic conductor Rich was a vocal coach for singers such as Martina Arroyo.

Rich claimed that he was born left-handed but was forced him to learn to be right-handed by teachers and family.