Erich Kleiber

Erich Kleiber was born in Vienna in August 1890 and trained as a violinist before turning to conducting via study at the German Conservatory in Prague. He held opera house posts at Darmstadt, Wuppertal, Düsseldorf and Mannheim through the 1910s and 1920s, and in 1923 was appointed general music director at the Berlin State Opera — a position he held for twelve years and from which he conducted the world premiere of Berg’s *Wozzeck* in December 1925, in what remained one of the defining new-music events of the inter-war period.

He resigned the Berlin post in 1934 in protest at the cultural restrictions of the Nazi regime — refusing in particular the suppression of Hindemith’s *Mathis der Maler* — and emigrated to Argentina, where he conducted at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires for the next two decades. He resumed European work after the war, including a return to the Berlin State Opera in 1954 from which he again resigned (in protest at East German political interference), and concert work with the Vienna Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic and others. His son Carlos Kleiber became one of the leading conductors of the next generation.

Erich Kleiber died in Zurich in January 1956. His Decca recordings of *Le nozze di Figaro*, *Der Rosenkavalier* and the Beethoven symphonies remained reference performances through the LP era. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his work with the Vienna and London orchestras.