Jascha Horenstein

The conductor Jascha Horenstein was born in Kiev. Horenstein's mother was Austrian. In 1911, Horenstein's family moved to Vienna in 1911. In Vienna, he studied with Franz Schreker (1878-1934) and others. Later he moved to Berlin and worked as an assistant to conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. During the 1920s Horenstein conducted both the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Because of the Nazi rise to power, Horenstein, a Jew, fled Europe and moved to the United States of America in 1940. Eventually, he became an American citizen. He died in London. During his long career as a conductor, he conducted the music of composers in the standard repertoire, but Horenstein also championed modern music. In 1929 he conducted the premiere of the arrangement for strings of three movements of "Lyric Suite" of Alban Berg (1885-1935) When the music of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) and Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was unfashionable, Horenstein arranged for performances of their works. In 1950, he gave the first (concert) performance of Berg's "Wozzeck." in 1950. His strong interest in Mahler motivated Horenstein to record all of Mahler's symphonies. He also recorded the 3rd symphony of Robert Simpson (1921-1997). Among the other contemporary composers that Horenstein conducted are Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Charles Ives (1874-1954), Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Bela Bartok (1881-1945), Anton von Webern (1883-1945), Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975).