Wolfgang Sawallisch

At a benefit concert of the Bavarian State Orchestra in Grassau on 2 February 2013 under the baton of Kent Nagano, Sawallisch was seen in public for the last time.

In 1949, he was awarded the first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition where he accompanied the violinist Gerhard Seitz.

When he debuted at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus conducting Tristan und Isolde in 1957, he was the youngest conductor ever to appear there.

From 1971 to 1992, he was music director of the Bavarian State Opera, and for several years from 1983, he was concurrently its general manager.

He also conducted 32 complete cycles of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, and is credited with nearly 1200 opera performances in the city alone.

Sawallisch subsequently made several recordings there, and in 1993 succeeded Riccardo Muti as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he remained until 2003.

[4] However, ill health related to orthostatic hypotension prevented Sawallisch from conducting in subsequent years.

[5] In an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer of 27 August 2006, Sawallisch himself stated his retirement from the concert podium: "It can happen without announcement that my blood pressure is too low.

"[6]Earlier, in 1988, he had published his autobiography "Im Interesse der Deutlichkeit" (For the Sake of Clarity) in which he had expounded his views on the role of a conductor.

[1][7] Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), a family friend, officiated at her Requiem Mass.

[12] Sawallisch also recorded, as piano accompanist, Franz Schubert's Winterreise and Robert Schumann's Liederkreis and other songs with Thomas Hampson.

[13][14][15] Sawallisch's recordings for EMI include highly regarded issues of Richard Strauss's Capriccio and the four symphonies of Robert Schumann with the Staatskapelle Dresden.

He made a quadraphonic stereo album (probably the only one ever made) of Mozart's The Magic Flute in 1973 for EMI, starring Peter Schreier as Tamino, Anneliese Rothenberger as Pamina, Walter Berry as Papageno, Edda Moser as the Queen of the Night, and Kurt Moll as Sarastro.