Antal Doráti

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The native form of this personal name is Doráti Antal. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Antal Doráti (1962)

Antal Doráti

KBE (UK: /ˌæntæl dɔːˈrɑːti/,[1] US: /ˈdɔːrɑːti, dɔːˈrɑːti/,[2] Hungarian: [ˈɒntɒl ˈdoraːti]; 9 April 1906 – 13 November 1988) was a Hungarian-born conductor and composer who became a naturalized American citizen in 1943.[3]

Biography

Antal Doráti was born in Budapest to a Jewish family. His father Alexander Doráti was a violinist with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra and his mother Margit Kunwald was a piano teacher.

He studied at the

Franz Liszt Academy with Zoltán Kodály and Leó Weiner for composition and Béla Bartók for piano. His links with Bartók continued for many years: he conducted the world premiere of Bartók's Viola Concerto, as completed by Tibor Serly, with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1949, with William Primrose
as the soloist.

He made his conducting debut in 1924 with the Budapest Royal Opera.

As well as composing original works, he compiled and arranged pieces by Johann Strauss II for the ballet Graduation Ball (1940), premiered by the Original Ballet Russe in Sydney, Australia, with himself on the conductor's podium. For Ballet Theatre (later renamed American Ballet Theatre) he created scores for the ballets Bluebeard (1941) from music by Jacques Offenbach and The Fair at Sorochinsk (1943) from music by Modest Mussorgsky.

His autobiography, Notes of Seven Decades, was published in 1979.

In 1983, Doráti was appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

His wife was Ilse von Alpenheim, an Austrian pianist. Doráti died at the age of 82 in Gerzensee, Switzerland.

Career

Doráti held posts as principal conductor of the following orchestras:

Recordings

He made his first recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for the recording label His Master's Voice. This was later transferred to RCA Records with whom HMV were for some time associated. Over the course of his career Doráti made over 600 recordings.

With the Philharmonia Hungarica, Doráti was the second conductor to record the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn (the first complete recorded edition was conducted by Ernst Märzendorfer and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, but it had a very limited release). He also recorded an unprecedented cycle of Joseph Haydn's operas and Ottorino Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Suites 1, 2 and 3.[4]

Doráti became especially well known for his recordings of

RIAA.[5]
He also recorded all six of Tchaikovsky's symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Other prominent composers in Doráti's recording career were Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky. His comprehensive series of Bartók's orchestral works for Mercury have been brought together on a 5-CD set.

He also made the first stereo recording of Léo Delibes' Coppélia, with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. An album set of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer is also among Doráti's popular recordings.

In 1969 he made the world premiere recording of Sibelius's tone poem Luonnotar, with Gwyneth Jones as soprano soloist. In 1973 he conducted the world premiere recording of Max Bruch's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, which was written in 1912 but only rediscovered in 1971.

In 1969 with the

Stockholm Philharmonic he conducted the first recording of the Symphony No. 7 of Swedish composer Allan Pettersson
.

He made

Grand Prix du Disque
.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Doráti". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
  2. ^ "Dorati, Antal". Lexico US English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 2 September 2022.
  3. ^ "BBC Radio 4 – Desert Island Discs, Antal Dorati". Bbc.co.uk. 25 July 1960. Retrieved 17 August 2015.
  4. ^ Mercury 434 304-2, 6/1958
  5. ISBN 0-214-20512-6
    .

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Antal Doráti.
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