Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker remember Lorin Maazel (19 min.)

The American Lorin Maazel was one of the very few child prodigy conductors – at the age of only nine, he stood before an orchestra at a public concert for the first time. Born in 1930, he also had a career as a violinist and composer, but above all, he became one of the most successful maestros of the 20th and 21st centuries. Maazel appeared in every major opera house and concert hall all over the world, and in the course of his long career, he held many important leading positions. In the 1960s and 70s, Berlin audiences knew him as chief conductor of both the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester (now the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin) and of Deutsche Oper. He also had a special relationship with the Berliner Philharmoniker and was seen following Karajan’s death as a promising candidate to succeed him. The fact that the orchestra eventually chose not him, but Claudio Abbado as new chief conductor offended the self-confident artist deeply. Nevertheless, he later returned to perform with the orchestra on many occasions. Following his sudden death on 13 July 2014, a planned concert with the Philharmoniker in May 2015 was unfortunately never to take place. In this video, orchestra members Peter Brem, Klaus Wallendorf, Laurentius Dinca, Rudolf Watzel, Stefan Schweigert and Rainer Seegers remember a conductor who had a perfect memory and a flawless baton technique, who exuded an aura of infallibility and in person could also be very approachable and humorous.