Antal Dorati Conductor and composer

摘要

'How do you do, ladies and gentlemen. Our castaway this week…' That was Roy Plomley in 1960 introducing the first of two Desert Island Discs episodes where Antal Dorati was the guest. The composer chose part of Fidelio, 'O Namenlose Freude', as his single choice (in 1980 he opted for Mendelssohn's Rondo Capricioso played by his wife, the pianist Use von Alpenheim). Dorati was frequently heard in the UK in the early 1960s, as he was the BBC Symphony Orchestra's chief conductor from 1963 to '66 and, unsurprisingly, often programmed music by Bartok (with LSO concerts too). Bartok had been his piano teacher at the Budapest Academy, where he had studied composition with Kodaly and Leo Weiner.