Erich Leinsdorf

Conductor, born in Vienna, Austria. After musical studies in Vienna, he became an assistant to Bruno Walter and Toscanini at the Salzburg Festival (1934–7). He moved to New York City in 1938 to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera, and was acclaimed especially for his Wagner. He conducted the Rochester Philharmonic (1947–56), the New York City Opera and Metropolitan (1955–62), and the Boston Symphony (1962–9), the latter his most notable years. He then guest-conducted widely.

Erich Leinsdorf (February 4, 1912 - September 11, 1993) was an Austrian conductor.

Leinsdorf was born in Vienna, and studied music there.

He had a brief three-year post as Musical Director at the Cleveland Orchestra. (Many years later, in the transition in Cleveland from Lorin Maazel to Christoph von Dohnányi between 1982 and 1984, Leinsdorf returned to lead several concerts, where he described his own role as "the bridge between the regimes'.)

He was conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra from 1947 to 1955, and music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1962 to 1969.

As the conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1967, he abruptly fled Israel in the middle of a concert series, just before the start of the Six-Day War.

On November 22, 1963 during a performance of the Boston Symphony Orchestra he interrupted the program with sad news saying "Ladies and Gentlemen, We have a press report over the wires...We hope that it is unconfirmed but we have to doubt it...that the President of the United States has been victim of an assassination."

His memoirs, Cadenza: A Musical Career, were published in 1976.