Klaus Tennstedt

Life and career

Tennstedt studied violin and piano at the Leipzig Conservatory. During the Nazi era, he avoided military service by joining a Baroque orchestra. In 1948, he became concertmaster of the Halle Municipal Theater orchestra, but a finger injury ended his violin career, and he continued as a voice coach at the same theater before turning to conducting. He became music director of the Dresden Opera in 1958 and music director of the Schwerin State Orchestra and Theatre in 1962.

He emigrated from East Germany in 1971, obtaining asylum in Sweden, where he conducted at the Göteborg Theater and with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm. In 1972, he became General Music Director of the Kiel Opera in northern Germany. Tennstedt made his North American debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1974. His first U.S. appearance was with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on December 13, 1974, conducting an all-Brahms program; the following week, his Bruckner Symphony No. 8 with the BSO earned laudatory reviews.

According to Norman Lebrecht's The Maestro Myth, when Boston management asked what he wanted to conduct, Tennstedt replied, 'You mean I get to choose? His appearances were so highly acclaimed that he was invited to guest-conduct at the Tanglewood Music Festival and Blossom Music Festival in 1975. His only American opera engagement was a series of seven performances of Beethoven's Fidelio at the Metropolitan Opera, the last of which, on January 7, 1984, was broadcast.

He also guest-conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic. In Europe, he guest-conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony of Munich, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the SDR Symphony (now the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra).