Harold Byrns

Harold Byrns (13 September 1903 – 22 February 1977) was a German-American conductor and orchestrator.

He was born Hans Bernstein in Hanover, Germany in 1903. His father had formed a chamber music society in Hanover, and he followed in his father's footsteps. He studied with Walter Gieseking, Erich Kleiber and Leo Blech at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, and became assistant to Kleiber and Blech. He worked as a conductor in Lübeck, Oldenburg, and Berlin (Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper) before emigrating to Italy in 1933 and then to the United States in 1936. He changed his name from Hans Bernstein to Harold Byrns because he felt he could not make it in America with a Jewish name. He formed his own chamber orchestra, the Harold Byrns Chamber Orchestra, which was regarded as the American counterpart of the Boyd Neel String Orchestra. While living in Los Angeles he wrote and orchestrated music for various films.

He arranged the music for Adolphe Adam's ballet Giselle for a February 1941 production by Anton Dolin at the Ballet Theatre on Broadway. In 1945 he orchestrated Lerner and Loewe's musical The Day Before Spring for Broadway. He was accepted for the role on the recommendation of Maurice Abravanel, who considered him a great orchestrator.

After the war he returned to Berlin, and he conducted at the Deutsche Oper, Komische Oper, and was a guest with various symphony orchestras, particularly the Hanover and Turin (RAI) Radio orchestras. He gave Mahler concerts with the Vienna Symphony and on Italian Radio.

...
Wikipedia