Leo Borchard

Lew Ljewitsch "Leo" Borchard (31 March 1899 – 23 August 1945) was a German-Russian conductor and briefly musical director of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Borchard was born in Moscow to German parents, and grew up in Saint Petersburg where he received a solid musical education, as well being a regular visitor to the Stanislavsky Theatre. In 1920, after the Russian Revolution, he emigrated to Germany. Otto Klemperer engaged him as his assistant at the Kroll Opera in Berlin (Klemperer, lacking confidence in his own abilities, expected Borchard to critique his conducting technique). He conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for the first time in January 1933. In 1935, he was banned by the Nazi regime as politically unreliable. He continued teaching at his apartment and received his friends, including Boris Blacher and Gottfried von Einem.

During World War II he remained in Berlin as a Resistance activist under the name Andrik Krassnow, during which time his duties included contact with Ludwig Lichtwitz, a specialist in false identity papers.

On 26 May 1945, two and a half weeks after Germany's unconditional surrender, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic at the Titania Palast cinema, in a concert featuring the Overture to Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mozart's Violin Concerto in A major and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4, to great public acclaim. One week later he was appointed musical director of the orchestra by the Soviet official Nikolai Berzarin, replacing Wilhelm Furtwängler, who was in exile in Switzerland. His anti-Nazi credentials and command of the Russian language enabled him to enjoy a close relationship with the occupiers. He gave 22 concerts in total as chief conductor of the BPO.

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