Otto Klemperer

Otto Klemperer was born in 1885 in Wrocław

Klemperer was born in 1885 in Breslau, now Wrocław in Poland. His father Nathan sang and his mother Ida played the piano. When he was about four, the family moved to Hamburg, and his mother gave him his first piano lessons.

He studied at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt and then in Berlin, where he followed his piano teacher James Kwast. He also studied composition and conducting with Hans Pfitzner. In 1905 he met Gustav Mahler, whose recommendation helped him get a post in Prague in 1907.

He then conducted at opera houses in Hamburg, Barmen, Strasbourg, Cologne and Wiesbaden. From 1927 to 1931 he directed the Kroll Opera in Berlin, where he staged new works and modern productions. He left Germany in 1933 after the Nazis rose to power and became chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

In 1939 he had surgery to remove a brain tumor, which left him partly paralyzed. He led the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest from 1947 to 1950. From 1951 he worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and made almost 200 recordings with it and the New Philharmonia.

He often visited Israel and conducted the Kol Israel orchestra. He returned to Judaism in 1967 and received Israeli citizenship in 1970. He died in Zurich in 1973.