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Maazel died in Virginia from complications following
pneumonia, the Castleton Festival said in a statement on its
website.
Maazel was born in Paris in 1930 to American parents and spent
his life in music as a composer, conductor and even a diplomat,
when he took the New York Philharmonic for an unprecedented
concert in North Korea in 2008 aimed at opening a door to one of
the world's most isolated countries.
An audience of North Korea's communist elite gave America’s
oldest orchestra a standing ovation after a rousing set in a
Pyongyang concert hall that took in Dvorak, Gershwin and a
Korean folk song. Some of the musicians were so overcome they
left the stage in tears.
"Little did we know that we would be thrown into orbit by this
stunning, stunning reaction,” Maazel said after the performance.
Between the ages of nine and 15, Maazel conducted most of the
major American orchestras, including the NBC Symphony at the
invitation of Arturo Toscanini, his official website said.
Maazel conducted more than 150 orchestras in more than 5,000
opera and concert performances, it said.
He made more than 300 recordings, including symphonic cycles of
complete orchestral works by Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Mahler,
Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Richard Strauss, winning
10 Grands Prix du Disques.
In 2009, Maazel founded the Castleton Festival, an annual summer
event on his Virginia farm, where he held performances and
training seminars.
During the opening night of the 2014 festival, Maazel said
working with the young musicians and singers as a “more than a
labor of love – a labor of joy.”
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Jon
Herskovitz)
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Conductor
Lorin Maazel dies at 84, led New York Philharmonic
