JEWISH ORCHESTRA CONDUCTORS
JINFO.ORG

SHORT LIST
  • Vladimir Ashkenazy 1
  • Daniel Barenboim
  • Leonard Bernstein
  • Antal Doráti 2
  • Istvan Kertész
  • Otto Klemperer
  • Serge Koussevitzky
  • James Levine
  • Lorin Maazel 
  • Gustav Mahler
  • Felix Mendelssohn
  • Pierre Monteux
  • Eugene Ormandy
  • André Previn
  • Fritz Reiner
  • Leonard Slatkin
  • Sir Georg Solti
  • George Szell
  • Bruno Walter
LONG LIST
  • Maurice Abravanel
  • Kurt Adler
  • Karel Ančerl
  • Vladimir Ashkenazy 1
  • Moshe Atzmon
  • John Axelrod
  • Carl Bamberger
  • Daniel Barenboim
  • Rudolf Barshai
  • Sir Julius Benedict
  • Leonard Bernstein
  • Gary Bertini
  • Stanley Black
  • Leo Blech
  • Artur Bodanzky
  • Leon Botstein
  • Semyon Bychkov
  • Edouard Colonne
  • Sergiu Comissiona
  • Sir Michael Costa
  • Sir Frederic Hymen Cowen
  • Leopold Damrosch 2
  • Walter Damrosch 3
  • Harry Ellis Dickson
  • Issay Dobroven
  • Antal Doráti 4
  • Karl Eliasberg
  • Percy Faith
  • Arthur Fiedler
  • Adam Fischer
  • Ivan Fischer
  • Lukas Foss
  • Ferenc Fricsay 5
  • Oskar Fried
  • Ossip Gabrilowitsch
  • Michael Gielen 6
  • Vladimir Golschmann
  • Bernard Haitink 7
  • David Handel
  • Sir George Henschel
  • Ferdinand Hiller
  • Jascha Horenstein
  • Eliahu Inbal
  • Mariss Jansons 8
  • Vladimir Jurowski
  • Isaac Karabtchevsky
  • Istvan Kertész
  • Otto Klemperer
  • Paul Kletzki
  • Kirill Kondrashin 9
  • André Kostelanetz
  • Serge Koussevitzky
  • Yakov Kreizberg
  • Josef Krips 10
  • Emmanuel Krivine
  • René Leibowitz
  • Erich Leinsdorf
  • Hermann Levi
  • Yoel Levi
  • James Levine
  • Norman Luboff
  • Lorin Maazel
  • Gustav Mahler
  • Walter Burle Marx
  • Felix Mendelssohn
  • Mitch Miller
  • Marc Minkowski 11
  • Pierre Monteux
  • Eugene Ormandy
  • Kirill Petrenko
  • André Previn
  • Eve Queler
  • Fritz Reiner
  • Steven Richman
  • Artur Rodzinsky
  • Sir Landon Ronald
  • Manuel Rosenthal
  • Julius Rudel
  • Max Rudolf
  • Victor de Sabata 12
  • Rico Saccani
  • Kurt Sanderling
  • Thomas Sanderling
  • Gerard Schwarz
  • Rudolf Schwarz
  • George Sebastian
  • José Serebrier
  • Fabien Sevitzky
  • Dmitry Sitkovetsky
  • Leonard Slatkin
  • Sir Georg Solti
  • William Steinberg
  • Josef Stransky
  • Adrian Sunshine
  • Walter Susskind
  • George Szell
  • Yoav Talmi
  • Kate Tamarkin
  • Henri Temianka
  • Michael Tilson Thomas
  • Georg Tintner
  • Alfred Wallenstein
  • Bruno Walter
  • Omer Meir Wellber
  • Israel Yinon
  • Benjamin Zander
  • David Zinman
NOTES

1. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
2. Information elsewhere on the Internet indicates that Leopold Damrosch's mother was not Jewish, which is untrue.   She was born Jeanette Peltesohn (or Peltasohn) to Eliezer Lazarus and Henrietta (née Urbach) Peltesohn in Breslau.  She had brothers with the given names Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Heimann, and Benjamin.  One of her sisters was named Sara Malke Ginsburg.  Another sister, Dorothea, also married into the Jewish Damrosch family. "Petlesohn" and "Urbach" (a variant of "Auerbach") were both surnames borne by Jews in early nineteenth century Breslau, according to Lars Menk's A Dictionary of German-Jewish Surnames (Avotaynu, Bergenfield, NJ, 2005).    
3. Jewish father,Leopold Damrosch, non-Jewish mother.  See footnote above.
4. In his autobiography, Notes of Seven Decades (Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1981, p. 82), Dor
áti states that he came from a family of "mixed but mostly of Jewish blood."
5. Jewish mother; maternal grandparents were Dávid and Roz
ália (née Unger) Löwy.
6.Jewish mother (née Rose Steuermann, sister of the concert pianist Eduard Steuermann and the actress Salka Viertel), non-Jewish father.  See, e.g., the third question in the 27 June 2007 Deutsche Welle interview: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2634764,00.html, where Gielen is asked "
War diese Außenseiterhaltung nicht schon in Ihrer Kindheit angelegt, erst als Halbjude in Dresden und Wien, dann als Deutscher in Argentinien?"  ("Was this outsider perspective not already present in your childhood, first as a half-Jew in Dresden and Vienna, then as a German in Argentina?")  Gielen responds in part: "Ja, sie hat sicher auch mit dem Judentum zu tun und damit...Ich nehme ja auch am jüdischen Leben nicht teil, außer auf einer intellektuellen Basis.  Intellektuell bin ich Deutscher und Jude und verdanke Argentinien die Kenntnis des lateinischen Kulturkreises."  ("Yes, it certainly had a lot to do with Judaism...I do not participate in Jewish life, except on an intellectual basis.  Intellectually, I am both a German and a Jew, and owe to Argentina a knowledge of Latin culture.")
7. Haitink had a Jewish maternal grandmother, which makes one completely Jewish according to traditional  Jewish Law.
8. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father; see http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/000531-NL-janson.html.

9. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father; see Kirill Kondrashin: His Life in Music, by Gregor Tassie (Scarecrow, Lanham, MD, 2010, p.2).
10. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.

11. Jewish father [Alexandre Minkowski, the son of the existentialist psychiatrist Eugčne Minkowski and the psychologist Françoise Minkowski - see biographies in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 12  (Keter, Jerusalem, 1972, pp. 33-34)].
12. De Sabata, who succeeded Toscanini as principal conductor at La Scala in 1930 (and held that position until 1957), was described as being Jewish during Wilhelm Furtwängler's  postwar tribunal.  A profile of de Sabata written by Mario Biondi describes
de Sabata's mother, Rosita Tedeschi, as "triestina di origine ebraica," a Triestine of Jewish origin.  See also http://www.musicacademyonline.com/composer/biographies.php?bid=148.


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