Maazel, Lorin Varencove, 1930–2014, American conductor, b. Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. A musical prodigy, he spent his childhood in Los Angeles, where he made his conducting debut at nine and his violin debut at fifteen. He debuted as an adult conductor leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood in 1951 and began his adult career when he conducted at the Teatro Bellini in Catania, Italy, in 1953. He went on to conduct with more than 20 European orchestras, and in 1960 became the first American to conduct at Bayreuth. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Maazel held many important directorships in Europe and the United States, including those of the Deutsche Opera (1965–71), the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (1965–75), the Cleveland Orchestra (1972–82), the Vienna State Opera (1982–84), the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1988–96), and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1993–2002). He succeeded Kurt Masur as music director (2002–9) of the New York Philharmonic and finished his career as principal conductor (2012–14) of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. Known for the breadth of his orchestral and operatic repertoire and for the rigor, depth, and sometimes idiosyncratic nature of his musical interpretations, Maazel also was a composer, e.g., Music for Violin and Orchestra (1997) and the opera 1984 (2005), and sometimes performed as a violinist.
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