Austrian, later American conductor.

Career Summary

Fritz Stiedry studied composition under Mandyczewski at the Vienna Conservatory, and then graduated from Vienna University with a doctorate in Law. His abilities as a conductor came to the attention of Gustav Mahler, and he was appointed an assistant conductor at the Vienna Court Opera in 1907. Thereafter he had a succession of appointments culminating in the Kassel Court Opera, where he was chief conductor in 1913, and then first conductor at the Berlin Opera 1914‒23, returning to Vienna in 1923, where he conducted the world premiere of Schoenberg's Die glückliche Hand at the Volksoper in 1924. Following that, he went to the Berlin Städtische Oper 1928‒33, during which period he became President of the International Society for Contemporary Music. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Stiedry moved to Leningrad to conduct the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra 1934‒37.

In 1938 he emigrated to the USA, becoming the conductor of the New Friends of Music Orchestra in New York, with which he conducted the world premiere of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 2 in 1940. After World War II, he went first to the Chicago Civic Opera, and from 1946 to 1958 conducted regularly at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Stiedry, Schoenberg, Moriz Violin

As the conductor of the New Friends of Music Orchestra in New York, he asked Schoenberg for an orchestral piece, prompting the latter to finish his Chamber Symphony No.2, begun in 1906 and completed in America in 1939, the first performance of which took place in New York on December 14, 1940. Moriz Violin mentions Stiedry favorably in a letter to Schoenberg of December 19, 1940 and refers to him again on April 14, May 21, and July 20, 1941 (LC ASC 27/45, [2], [27], [28], [29]), when he may have been trying to involve him in plans that he was making for an institute in San Francisco.

Sources

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