Background

Dimitri Mitropoulos was born on 18 February 1896, in Athens, Greece. He was the son of Jean Mitropoulos, a leather merchant, and Angeliki Anagnostopoulos.

Education

Mitropoulos began to study the piano at the age of seven and entered the Athens Conservatory of Music, where he studied piano with Ludwig Wassenhoven and composition with the resident Belgian musician Armand Marsick. He graduated in piano in 1918 and in composition two years later. From 1921 to 1924, he studied composition and piano in Berlin, attending master classes in piano with Ferruccio Busoni.

Career

While still in his teens, Mitropoulos published several songs to Greek and French texts as well as religious works, among them a symphonic poem, La mise au tombeau du Christ (1916). He also wrote pieces of native derivation, such as Fête crétoise (1919) for piano, based on popular melodies of Crete. On May 20, 1919, his opera Soeur Béatrice, based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, was produced at the Athens Conservatory with considerable success. Camille Saint-Saëns, who was present at the performance, praised it highly in a review in the French press. On the strength of this accomplishment, Mitropoulos received a government stipend enabling him to go to Brussels, where he became a composition student of Paul Gilson. Mitropoulos' talent for conducting emerged while he was serving as an opera coach at the Berlin Staatsoper, where he was noticed by Erich Kleiber and promoted to assistant conductor. Mitropoulos then returned to Athens, where he conducted the orchestra of the Athens Conservatory, which later became the Greek State Orchestra. In 1930, he became professor of composition at the conservatory. The turning point of his career as a conductor was his appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic on February 27, 1930, for which the pianist Egon Petri had been engaged as soloist in the Third Piano Concerto of Prokofiev. Petri suddenly became indisposed, and Mitropoulos volunteered to substitute, conducting entirely by memory from the keyboard. This extraordinary demonstration of dual prowess created a sensation. When Mitropoulos repeated this performance in Paris in 1932, Prokofiev commented that it was an "acrobatic salto mortale in a three-ring circus, " adding that he himself would never have been able to duplicate it. Mitropoulos impressed audiences and the Paris critics with his interpretations of diverse styles of music and his penetrating sense of subtle nuances of instrumental color. Florent Schmitt, the French composer and critic for Le temps, praised Mitropoulos for his inspired command of the orchestra and compared him to a priest officiating at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Mitropoulos' success in Berlin and Paris established his reputation as a conductor of the highest distinction. In 1934, he toured Italy, France, Belgium, Poland, and Russia. Invited by Serge Koussevitzky to make his American debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he appeared on January 20, 1936, in a difficult program that included the Symphonia Domestica of Richard Strauss. He conducted the entire program from memory and even dispensed with the score at rehearsals, an unexampled achievement. His practice of leading the orchestra without a baton was a procedure previously adopted by only a few conductors. Mitropoulos' gentlemanly regard for his players' sensitivities and his willingness to accept blame for minor contretemps, even when a player was patently at fault, endeared him to the Boston musicians, who rose to their feet to welcome him before the concert.

In 1937, Mitropoulos succeeded Eugene Ormandy as conductor and music director of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. From the outset, he showed his determination to promote modern music, including in his programs works by Schoenberg, Berg, Krenek, and then radical American composers such as Roger Sessions. Conflicts developed with the management of the orchestra, which favored programs of traditional music, and Mitropoulos resigned in 1949. He was then engaged as conductor of the New York Philharmonic jointly with Leopold Stokowski, having made his first appearance with the orchestra on December 19, 1940, in a performance hailed by Olin Downes, music critic of the New York Times, as "incredibly exciting. " In 1950, Mitropoulos became principal conductor and music director of the New York Philharmonic, and in 1955, he toured Europe with the orchestra. In 1958, Leonard Bernstein, who had been engaged two years earlier as associate conductor of the Philharmonic, succeeded Mitropoulos as music director. Mitropoulos also conducted notable opera performances, including Alban Berg's Wozzeck at La Scala in Milan on June 5, 1952; and in New York City on December 15, 1954, Richard Strauss's Salome and the world premiere of Samuel Barber's Vanessa on January 15, 1958, both at the Metropolitan Opera House. Mitropoulos died of heart failure during a rehearsal of Mahler's Third Symphony with the orchestra of La Scala in Milan.

Achievements

• Dimitri Mitropoulos received international fame, in the classical music world, both as a major conductor and composer of the 20th century. After his death the annual Mitropoulos Competition for young conductors was established in New York City.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Mozart: Don Giovanni - 1956 Salzburger Festpiele

    (Recorded live at the 1956 Salzburg Festival, this is one ...)

  • The Art of Dimitri Mitropoulos, Vol. 1

    (Vol. 1 of the Art of Dimitri Mitropoulus -Composer (1896-...)

  • Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 77 & Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 107
  • Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 6 In A minor (New York 1955)
  • Dimitri Mitropoulos - Mitropoulos Conducts Tchaikovsky And Mussorgsky Japan CD SICC-1516
  • The Art of Dimitri Mitropoulos, Vol. 2 (1945-1955)

Views

During the civil strife in Greece in 1948, he ostentatiously sported a button proclaiming his sympathies with the leftist movement.

Quotations: "I never use a score when conducting my orchestra. .. Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion?"

"Only life suffered can transform a symphony from a collection of notes into a message of humanity. "

"Success can corrupt; usefulness can only exalt. "

Personality

Mitropoulos had become an American citizen in 1946. Mitropoulos acknowledged his eclectic musical tastes, which embraced the full spectrum of classical, romantic, and modern music. His interpretations of works by Mahler, Bruckner, Debussy, Richard Strauss, and the Second Vienna School were particularly eloquent. He had virtually abandoned composition by 1938, after having produced songs, chamber music, incidental music for Greek tragedies, and minor works for orchestra or piano in a neoclassical style. A man of modest habits, he cared little for formal honors and was known for his generosity in donating funds to humanitarian and other causes.

He was "quietly known to be homosexual" and "felt no need for a cosmetic marriage".

Connections

Mitropoulos never married.

Father:

Jean Mitropoulos

Mother:

Angeliki Anagnostopoulos

References

• Symphony Conductors of the U.S.A
• Priest of Music: The Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos (Amadeus)
• Dimitri Mitropoulos and his works in the 1920s: The introduction of musical modernism in Greece
• Musicians Since 1900 Performers in Conce