Ferenc Fricsay

Ferenc Fricsay (Budapest, 1914 – Basel, 1963) was one of the most prominent Hungarian conductors of the second half of the twentieth century. He trained at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest under Kodály and Bartók, whose music he later performed with an authority that critics recognised.

His career began in Szeged, where he conducted from 1936 to 1944. In 1939 he made his debut at the helm of the Budapest Opera, which entrusted him with its musical directorship in 1945. At the same time he became director of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, where Klemperer was then principal guest conductor. His international profile rose rapidly in 1947, when he stood in for the ailing Klemperer at the premiere of von Einem's opera Dantons Tod at the Salzburg Festival. He then toured across Europe and, from 1948 to 1952, lived in Berlin as musical director of the Municipal Opera and of the RIAS orchestra, later known as the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.

His work abroad included a British debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 1950, conducting Le nozze di Figaro with the Glyndebourne Opera, and a brief period in the United States, with the Boston Symphony in 1953 and the Houston Symphony in 1954, which ended amid disagreements over musical policy. In 1956 he took up the musical directorship of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich for two seasons, after which he returned to Berlin to retain his post with the radio orchestra until his death. In 1961 he inaugurated the rebuilt Deutsche Oper with Don Giovanni.

Fricsay soon gave up the baton, and his precision and clarity surprised those who doubted that technique. His performances of well-known classics were taut and strongly characterised, and he was also admired in the contemporary repertoire. He paid particular attention to recording techniques and left numerous discs for Deutsche Grammophon, among them five Mozart operas, Fidelio, Verdi's Requiem, and orchestral works by Bartók and Stravinsky.