Rudolf Schwarz (conductor)

Rudolf Schwarz CBE (29 April 1905 – 30 January 1994) was an Austrian-born conductor of Jewish ancestry. He became a British citizen and spent the latter half of his life in England.

Schwarz was born in a Jewish family in Vienna and at the age of six began piano lessons followed shortly by the violin. His father was opposed to his son's ambition to become a conductor and money for music lessons and gallery tickets at the Opera came from him given lessons himself. He studied with the composers Richard Robert, Hans Gál and Richard Strauss. At the age of 17 he played viola in the Vienna State Opera orchestra and Vienna Philharmonic, in 1922, and he made his conducting debut in Düsseldorf as assistant to Georg Szell in 1924. Schwarz also acted as director of the choral society in Rheydt.

After opera experience in Düsseldorf, Schwarz moved to Karlsruhe in 1927 as first conductor at the State Theatre alongside Josef Krips and Joseph Keilberth. There, he conducted all Wagner operas except Tristan und Isolde, and led symphony concerts. The Civil Service Law of 7 April 1933 led to his dismissal by the Nazis because he was Jewish.

In 1936, he became a director of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (JKB) in Berlin, a German-Jewish cultural organization backed by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels, which allowed Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences. He also conducted in Gothenburg between 1936 and 1938. The Nazis imprisoned him from 1939 to 1940. When the JKB was dissolved in 1941, he was deported to Auschwitz, but Wilhelm Furtwängler's wife Zitla secured his release. He was then sent to Sachsenhausen and ended up in Belsen concentration camp in 1945. While at Auschwitz, he suffered a broken shoulder-blade, which inhibited his gestures as a conductor in later life. The effects of this injury on his conducting style can be seen in a DVD of him conducting the finale of the Brahms Violin Concerto with David Oistrakh in May 1958.

...
Wikipedia