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Although sometimes billed as a bass baritone, Franz Crass was a high bass with an instrument of unusual warmth and suppleness. In an age in which most German basses offered weighty, droning sounds, Crass' very beautiful instrument ideally fit such roles as Sarastro (he sang the Sprecher in Die Zauberflöte as well), Rocco in Fidelio, and the Hermit in Der Freischütz. Not until the arrival of Kurt Moll was there a European bass quite so mellifluous. After his first few recordings, especially those with Otto Klemperer, Crass was invited to take on many engagements, both in the studio and on-stage. After studies at Cologne's Hochschule für Musik, where he worked extensively with professor Clemens Glettenberg, Crass took several first place awards offered by academies and broadcasting organizations. In 1954, he was offered a contract by the Städischen Bühnen Krefeld/München-Gladbach and remained there for two years before joining Hanover's Landestheater. In 1959, he began a long association with the Bayreuth Festival, performing in Lohengrin and returning in Der fliegende Holländer the following year. In later years, he appeared there in several operas recorded for commercial release. Unfortunately, some of his colleagues in Parsifal and Lohengrin were in poor voice and Boulez's conducting of the former was superficially fast. From 1962 to 1964, Crass performed with the Cologne Opera, moving thereafter to the Hamburg State Opera. As his career expanded, he was a frequent guest in Munich, Vienna, at La Scala, and at Covent Garden. Visits to America were fewer and the singer's one production at the Chicago Lyric Opera (Fidelio) showed the effects of the deafness that eventually ended his career. Although his Rocco was still handsome in sound, persistent flatness of pitch proved worrisome. During his prime, Crass recorded many of his finest roles. At least two live performances of his Dutchman were preserved, matched in vocal splendor only by Hans Hotter's WWII-era document. Crass was the superb Sarastro in Karl Böhm's Zauberflöte that also featured the elegant Tamino of Fritz Wunderlich. Various recordings of Bach demonstrate how much better the composer's bass arias sound when sung by a full and genuinely beautiful voice.

Soprano Edith Mathis has had one of the leading international vocal careers of the twentieth century and was particularly well known for her Mozart and Strauss roles. She studied at the Lucerne Conservatory and made her stage debut there as the Second Boy in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. After singing in Zürich, she joined the Cologne Opera in 1959. Remaining with the company until 1963, she began singing the major repertory roles. She also made guest appearance during these years at the Hamburg State Opera, Glyndebourne (where she first appeared in 1962 singing Cherubino in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro), and the Salzburg Festival opera.

In 1963, she joined the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. Her Covent Garden debut was in 1970, as Susanna. She went on to sing in the major opera houses of the world, including the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and the Opéra de Paris. She sang regularly at the Salzburg and Munich Festivals.

Among her other roles were Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Marzelline in Fidelio, and Mélisande in Debussy's Pélleas et Mélisande, and Pamina in the Magic Flute. She was considered outstanding in the role of Sophie in Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. As the list of roles indicates, she had a bright voice suggesting youth and freshness, and she was regarded an excellent actress. Other roles with which she was particularly associated include the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Agathe in Der Freischütz.

Mathis is also a highly regarded oratorio and recital singer, known for direct, simple expression of the classic lieder repertory, and is also highly regarded as a Bach singer, as well as singing the oratorios of Joseph Haydn and numerous works of Mozart and Handel.

She has made many recordings and received numerous recording prizes, including the Prix Mondial du Disque. Other honors include the Hans-Reinhard-Ring from the Swiss Society for Theater, the Arts Prize of the city of Lucerne, the Buxtehude Prize from the Senate of Lübeck, and the Mozart Medal of the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 1979 the Bavarian government declared her a Bayerische Kammersangerin.

Dame Gwyneth Jones has achieved remarkable success throughout her vocal career. Best known for her performances of Turandot and the role of Brünnhilde, she has brought an attractive stage presence, total musicianship, a highly controlled voice, and thorough emotional and dramatic involvement to all of her appearances.

Gwyneth Jones was born to Edward George and Violet Webster Jones in 1936, in Pontnewynydd, Wales. Her studies with Arnold Smith and Ruth Packer at the Royal College of Music in London were made possible by a scholarship from the County Council. She also studied at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, at Herbert Graf's International Opera Centre in Zurich, and with Maria Carpi in Geneva. Jones' professional debut, as a mezzo-soprano, was the role of Annina in Der Rosenkavalier with the Zurich Opera in 1962. Shortly afterward, she noticed her voice moving upward, which allowed her to sing her first soprano role of Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera. She was also heard singing Lady Macbeth for the Welsh National Opera and the Royal Opera and was heard filling in for Leontyne Price and Régine Crespin at Covent Garden. After performing roles such as Santuzza, Desdemona, and Tosca, she made appearances at the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, and the principal opera houses in Berlin, Paris, Hamburg, and Rome. On the experiences, she commented, "It has given me a special thrill to be accepted at the source -- Verdi and Puccini at La Scala, Mozart and Beethoven in Munich and Vienna, and Wagner at Bayreuth."

Shortly after Jones made her 1966 American (New York) debut as the title role in Cherubini's Medea, she married Till Haberfeld, a director, with whom she had one child. She achieved American success with her performance of Fidelio with the San Francisco Opera and for her Metropolitan Opera debut as Sieglinde in Die Walküre in November of 1972. One of Jones' greatest achievements was doing all three Brünnhilde roles in the summer of 1976 at the Bayreuth centennial Ring Cycle under Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau. Jones entered a phase of her career when at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, she gave her first performance of Turandot, a role she had learned from her former teacher, Dame Eva Turner. This feat was regarded as one of the greatest triumphs of the later portion of Jones' career, during which she became known as the world's finest interpreter of this role. She also took on the roles of Minnie in La Fanciulla del West, the widow Begbick in Mahagonny, and the mother in Hänsel und Gretel.

Jones continued the same energetic performance schedule she began early in her career, well into the new century. She made her debut as a director and costume designer in a 2003 production of Der fliegende Holländer, as well as expanding her repertoire to mezzo-soprano and contralto roles. In 2007, she debuted the Queen of Hearts role in Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland, and in 2017, Jones performed the role of the Countess in Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades for the first time. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1986, named a Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and is a Kammersängerin of both the Vienna and Bavarian State Operas. ~ Meredith Gailey

Peter Schreier was one of the most highly esteemed tenors of the 20th century, particularly in German lieder, oratorio, and cantata performances, as well as opera. He was also well-regarded as a conductor, specializing in the music of Bach and Mozart.

Schreier was born in Meissen, Germany, on July 29, 1935. His father was a church Kantor and gave him his first musical training. At age eight, Peter entered the preparatory class of the famous chorus, the Dresdner Kreuzchor. He made his first operatic appearance as one of the Three Boys in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in 1944, which led him to consider a musical career. At age 10, he was admitted as a boy soprano and rapidly rose to the position of first soloist with the choir. As such, he sang on some of the first German LPs ever released, of Bach cantatas on Deutsche Grammophon's Das alte Werk imprint. He traveled to France, Scandinavia, and Luxembourg, among other destinations, on tour with the Dresdner Kreuzchor; he remained with the choir as a tenor after his voice changed. In 1954, he began taking private voice lessons with Fritz Polster, while working as a member of the Leipzig Radio Chorus. He entered the Dresden Musikhochschule in 1956, where his teacher was Herbert Winkler. Schreier studied both singing and conducting. He also studied at the Dresden State Opera's training school. In 1957, he appeared in the opera studio's production of Il Matrimonio Segreto as Paolino. He graduated from the Musikhochschule in 1959 and joined the Dresden State Opera's company as a lyric tenor. His first professional appearance was there in the small role of the First Prisoner in Beethoven's Fidelio. During those years, he made an intriguing concert tour to India and the African nation of Mali.

He sang a guest appearance at the Berlin State Opera, and in 1963, he gained a contract with that company as its leading lyric tenor. He made numerous guest appearances in the Soviet Union and other countries of what was then known as the Eastern Bloc, and appeared fairly often in the West, in Vienna and the Salzburg Festival in Austria, the Bayreuth Wagner Festival House in West Germany, London (debuting in 1966), the Vienna State Opera (1967), Milan's La Scala (1969), and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires (also 1969). He quickly won acclaim in particular for his portrayals of Mozart's main tenor roles and as a recitalist. He was also highly praised for roles as diverse as Alfred in Die Fledermaus and Loge in Das Rheingold and appeared in the premiere of Dessau's Einstein as The Physicist. He also sang the role of Almaviva in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, Fenton in Verdi's Otello, and Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, to name a few. He regularly sang in Bach's passions, cantatas, and other choral works, and became a treasured lieder singer. His Schubert was especially regarded for its highly expressive projection and shaping of the words. Schreier retired from the opera stage in 2000, though he continued to give lieder and sacred music concerts for several more years.

In the 1970s, Schreier began conducting as well as singing, leading several prestigious orchestras such as the Vienna and New York Philharmonics in productions of sacred music by Bach and Mozart. His final vocal performance was in 2005 when he conducted and sang the Evangelist role in a production of Bach's Christmas Oratorio; he continued to teach and conduct following his singing retirement. After celebrating Christmas with his family, Schreier was taken to the hospital where he passed away on December 25, 2019.

He sang primarily on East German recordings, many of which have been re-released on the Berlin Classics and Philips labels. In 2019, Rondeau Productions released a recording of Schreier conducting the Sächsischer Kammerchor and Mitteldeutsche Virtuosen in a 2018 live performance of Bach's Johannes-Passion. ~ Joseph Stevenson

Born in 1926, Theo Adam was one of the leading bass-baritones of the post-World War II era, particularly well known for his Wagnerian roles. He joined the boys' choir of the Dresden Kreuzchor in 1937, a traditional starting point for singers of that city. He began studying music in his hometown and in Weimar. He was called for military service in 1944 but resumed musical studies when the war ended.

His professional debut was at the Dresden State Opera in 1949, which led to a guest appearance in the 1952 Bayreuth Festival, which was also the year he joined the Berlin State Opera. Despite the handicap of living in the Soviet bloc, Adam was selected in 1963, after a few appearances in smaller roles, to sing the role of Wotan in Wagner's Ring at the Wagnerian shrine of Bayreuth in 1963. He later sang the other major bass-baritone and bass roles in many Wagner operas, including Hans Sachs, King Mark, Amfortas, and the Dutchman. Adam was also well known for the roles of Baron Ochs (Strauss' Rosenkavalier), Pizzaro (Beethoven's Fidelio), Wozzeck (Berg), King Philip (Verdi's Don Carlos), La Roche (Strauss' Capriccio), Don Giovanni (Mozart), and other important parts.

Adam appeared at the world's most prestigious venues, with debuts at the Metropolitan in 1963, Covent Garden in 1967, and the 1972 Salzburg Festival. He was also a highly esteemed oratorio singer. In addition to singing the Bach Passions and several cantatas, he was exceptional in the title role of Mendelssohn's Elijah.

Adam's interpretations were intelligent and dramatic, his voice robust. Beginning in 1977, Adam made regular television appearances on his show "Theo Adam lädt ein" (An ivitation from Theo Adam). The author of several books, Adam wase laureate of numerous awards, including the Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau, the National First Prize of the German Democratic Republic, and the title of "Chamber Singer of Austria." Adam died at the age of 92 in his hometown, early in 2019.

The Staatskapelle Dresden (or Dresden State Orchestra), also known as the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, is one of Europe's oldest continuously operating performing arts organizations. It has numbered some of Europe's most famous composers and conductors among its music directors, and amid changing fashions, it has enjoyed an almost unbroken reputation for high quality.

The orchestra dates back to 1548, when Dresden was part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was founded by the Elector Moritz of Saxony to accompany the court chorus in the new large choral compositions of the time. It evolved from an even older group, the Kurfürstlich-Sächsische und Königlich-Polnische Kapelle. During the 17th century, its music directors included Heinrich Schütz, who was closely associated with the orchestra for over half the century. As opera grew at the Dresden court, one of the orchestra's main functions was to accompany the leading German opera company of the day, and Johann Adolf Hasse was the Kapellmeister (or music director) from 1734 to 1763. The orchestra and opera persisted through the unrest of late 18th century Europe, emerging as an operatic center under Carl Maria von Weber in the early Romantic era. Other famous names to conduct the orchestra in opera were Richard Wagner -- who called it a "magic harp" and premiered Rienzi, Die fliegende Holländer, and Tannhäuser there -- and, later, Richard Strauss.

In 1858, the Staatskapelle Dresden began giving concerts of symphonic music, and here again, its reputation grew quickly. Music directors since the turn of the 20th century have included Fritz Reiner, Karl Böhm, Herbert Blomstedt, Bernard Haitink, and, since 2012, Christian Thielemann. In 2013, the Staatskapelle Dresden became the resident ensemble of the Salzburg Easter Festival, where Thielemann also serves as artistic director. In the 21st century, the orchestra began a composers-in-residence program; holders of position have included Hans Werner Henze, Sofia Gubaidulina (twice), Arvo Pärt, and, in 2021 and 2022, Matthias Pintscher.

The orchestra's recording catalog is large, including multiple releases almost every year since 1990 on such labels as Berlin Classics, Denon, and Deutsche Grammophon. In 2017, the orchestra, under Thielemann, released a recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 in E flat major ("Romantic"), on the Profil - Edition Günter Hänssler label. A live recording of Bruckner's Symphony No. 1, with Thielemann once again leading the orchestra, was issued in 2021. Many of the Staatskapelle Dresden's historical performances have also been remastered and re-released. ~ James Manheim

One of the most acclaimed operatic and orchestral conductors of his generation, Karl Bohm was one of the most influential musicians and recording artists in the postwar classical world. As a specialist in Mozart, Wagner, and Strauss, he had few peers and his expertise extended to the music of Haydn on one end and Schoenberg and Berg on the other.

Bohm was born in Graz, Austria, of German-Bohemian descent (the name "Bohm" literally translates as "Bohemian") on his father's side and French-Alsatian background on his mother's side. He was the son of Leopold Bohm, an attorney, and the nephew of Austria's former Minister of War, General Stoger-Steiner. Bohm earned a law degree in deference to his father's wishes, but his real interest lay in music -- he studied privately in Graz and later in Vienna, and by 1915 was coaching singers at the Graz Opera, even as he worked toward a career in law. He made his debut as a conductor at Graz in 1917, with Viktor Nessler's forgotten opera Der Trompeter von Sackingen, a work that Bohm later described as "something for the tastes of a provincial choral society." In 1919 he received his doctorate in law, but Bohm had already begun a serious career in music.

Bohm's first great triumph came soon after, with the Graz production of Wagner's Lohengrin, for which he added extra singers from the city's choral society, and then spent months rehearsing every part in painstaking detail, even singing each part himself with the vocalists -- although he wore out his own health with this effort, the resulting performances were an artistic and critical triumph that had far-reaching consequences for Bohm. Among those in attendance at the performance was Karl Muck, one of the leading conductors of the day, famed at the time for his work at Bayreuth as well as with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Muck offered to train Bohm further in Wagner's music, and the younger man spent his apprenticeship with Muck working on the Ring cycle, Parsifal, Tristan und Isolde, and Meistersinger. It was with this groundwork that Bohm was prepared to work on a new production of Tristan, which became one of the works for which Bohm was most famous.

In 1921, Bohm was solidly entrenched in Graz when he was offered the chance to join the Munich State Opera as an assistant to Bruno Walter, the leading light among the younger generation of conductors. The circumstances of his audition were most unusual -- he was allowed the chance to conduct Weber's Der Freischutz with only a single hour's rehearsal for the orchestra, which allowed him to work on only one of the opera's three acts. He chose the third act, and in one scene noted the absence of clarinets, over the passage where the Hermit enters. The musicians insisted there was no clarinet part, and Bohm ordered the score out of archives -- he found the clarinet part, obscured under the stains from oil lamps, and received the congratulations of Walter and the job as his assistant. Bohm later described this seeming reduction in rank, to assistant conductor of a first-rate opera company, as a vital element in his education. He spent six years in Munich working under Walter, conducting 528 performances of 73 different operas, a unique and priceless learning experience.

The most important part of this experience lay with Mozart's and Wagner's operas. In 1927, Bohm accepted an appointment as music director at Darmstadt, where he gained further experience conducting modern operatic works, including Berg's Wozzeck.

Fate played a hand in 1930 when Bohm conducted Beethoven's Fidelio in Darmstadt as part of a celebration of the 150th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. The Ninth Symphony had received a lackluster performance under another conductor; when Bohm's performance of the opera rescued the festivities, with one critic writing "That was the Beethoven celebration. That was the Beethoven celebration." Fidelio was to remain at the core of his repertory over the next 50 years.

In 1931, Bohm moved on to the same position at the Hamburg Opera, and in 1933, he met Richard Strauss for the first time, when the composer came to Hamburg to help in the preparation of the premiere of his opera Arabella. Bohm's contact with Strauss was a pivotal moment in his career on several levels, leading not only to a close relationship between the two for the next 16 years, but to a much deeper understanding of Mozart's operas, growing out of Strauss' devotion to Mozart. Bohm also became an increasingly familiar figure at the podium in the concert hall, and made his debut with the Vienna Symphony in the early '30s. His first chance to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic came in April of 1933 when the orchestra's music director, Clemens Krauss, resigned and Bohm stepped into the breach for a concert. It marked the beginning of a long, productive relationship with the orchestra.

Bohm faced his first career setback in 1933 following the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. He was called to the office of an attorney in Hamburg who had assumed the post of the party's official representative in the city, and was informed that the current music director, as a non-Aryan, would momentarily be dismissed, and that Bohm was the logical choice for the job -- but for the fact that they could find no record of his party membership. When confronted about what party he belonged to, the conductor replied "Music." He was denied the post after refusing to join the Nazi Party.

In 1934, following Fritz Busch's forced resignation as music director of the Dresden Opera, Bohm took up the Dresden post. Although he was later criticized for this, Bohm retained a cordial friendship with Busch himself. The Dresden post led to other appointments, which, in turn, resulted in the beginning of his international career. In the mid-'30s, he made his London debut at Covent Garden and Queen's Hall, conducting the Saxon State Opera and Orchestra.

Bohm's musical activities during the Nazi era were extensive, both in Germany and Austria, where he conducted many of the Vienna Philharmonic's subscription concerts following the country's annexation by Germany in 1938, and became director of the Vienna State Opera on January 1, 1943, a post that he held until the Allied victory in 1945. He recorded many works with the Vienna Opera and Philharmonic, as well as the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra. Among Bohm's important and groundbreaking recordings during this era were the Bruckner Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5, several of Strauss' and Mozart's operas, and the symphonies of Mozart and Brahms, among others.

Bohm's activities during World War II were seldom written about during his lifetime, although they were much discussed. On one level, he was courageous musical figure, championing the music of Richard Strauss, conducting the opera Die Schweigsame Frau ("The Silent Woman") despite the official disdain with which the work -- with its libretto written by the outlawed, "non-Aryan" Stefan Zweig -- was held in official government circles (Hitler himself, at Strauss' heartfelt and unyielding insistence, allowed an exception to the ban on performance, but then declined to attend), and Strauss' subsequent opera, Daphne, which was dedicated to Bohm. He also sheltered a Jewish industrialist for over a year in Vienna, quietly challenging the Nazi-era regime, even as he participated in official functions on behalf of the government and the party.

As director of the Vienna State Opera, Bohm brought the company's standards back up from a low that they'd hit at the end of 1938, after the impact of the German annexation and the departure of many of the company's best musicians. During the war, he conducted the work of such other contemporary composers as Hans Pfitzner and Theodore Berger, but his most important commitment was to Richard Strauss. From the comparative safety of Vienna, where Strauss had fled -- under the protection of the appointed governor -- after his falling out with Nazi officialdom, Bohm staged an 80th birthday celebration of the composer's music.

Bohm was banned from public performances in Germany and Austria in the wake of the Allied victory in 1945, but he became a frequent guest of opera companies elsewhere in Europe, and from 1950 until 1954 served as director of German repertory at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1954, he returned to Vienna and, in a bitter victory over his rival Clemens Krauss, was given the directorship of the Vienna State Opera, where he conducted the production of Beethoven's Fidelio that not only reopened the rebuilt opera house, but was the subject of an NBC prime-time network special (Call to Freedom) early in 1956. Among his most notable recordings during this period in Vienna was his performance of Strauss' Die Frau Ohne Schatten for English Decca. In February of 1956, Bohm also made his long-delayed debut in America, as a guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In March of 1956 he resigned from the Vienna Philharmonic's music directorship amid criticism over his frequent absences from the city. Bohm never took another music director's spot, preferring conducting to the distractions of administration.

His Metropolitan Opera debut, and his first performance in Manhattan, took place on October 28, 1957, when he opened the company's 1957-1958 season with a new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, in which Bohm's work was reviewed as "an artistic sensation...cast[ing] its spell over a grateful audience." Bohm was later praised in the New York Herald Tribune for welding an often competitive group of singers into "the most patrician operatic ensemble imaginable." In the 1959 season, he not only revived Don Giovanni, but conducted a highly praised new production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger Von Nurnburg, and, later still, Alban Berg's Wozzeck.

In 1960, Bohm made his Carnegie Hall debut conducting the New York Philharmonic for the first time, in a program of pieces by Mozart, Hindemith, and Brahms that was a great critical and popular success. In 1961, he brought the Berlin Philharmonic on tour of the United States, conducting a program that included Strauss' Don Juan and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. That same year, he also conducted Wagner's Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time. And with the New York Philharmonic in November of 1962, now at their new home in Philharmonic (later Avery Fisher) Hall at Lincoln Center, he conducted Mozart's Symphony No. 41 (Jupiter) and Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 which, in those days, was still a work little heard in the United States.

During this same period, Bohm's son, the actor Carl (aka Karlheinz) Boehm, achieved some prominence in international movies. During the early '60s, he was seen in major roles in such blockbusters as MGM's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, although his best starring part was as the lead in Michael Powell's classic Peeping Tom.

Even as Karl Bohm's renown in America was growing, his obligations in Europe were burgeoning as well. Apart from operatic engagements and a growing body of recordings, mostly for the Deutsche Grammophon label (although the most highly praised of his three recordings of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte was done in London, for EMI), involved work with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra (of which he also served as president), the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Saxon State Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, and the Vienna Philharmonic. His repertory by this time embraced everything from Haydn and Mozart to Berg and Schoenberg, and in addition to steady concert commitments throughout the '60s and '70s, he also made hundreds of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, including new performances (primarily live) of virtually all of Richard Strauss' major operas, all of the Mozart operas, the Beethoven symphonies, the late Mozart symphonies, and most of the rest of his repertory, up to and including 20th century works. In 1964, in recognition of his career, the Austrian government granted Bohm the honorary title of "General Music Director of Austria," while in Germany, a statue of the conductor stands at the Berlin Opera House.

His greatest American triumph took place in October of 1966, when he conducted Strauss' Die Frau Ohne Schatten at the Metropolitan Opera. In its review of the concert, The New York Times critic wrote of Bohm, "Among the present group of Met opera conductors, he towers like a colossus."

In 1967, Bohm brought the Vienna Philharmonic to Carnegie Hall and the Montreal Worlds Fair ("Expo '67"), and under Bohm's baton the Vienna Philharmonic later played a role in the 125th anniversary celebration of the New York Philharmonic's founding. With the deaths of Furtwangler, Walter, and Klemperer, Bohm was the last conductor from 19th-century Austria or Germany to remain active into the 1970s, and his work continued at a furious pace -- including tours of Japan with the Vienna Philharmonic -- until he suffered a stroke in 1981, from which he never fully recovered.

Bohm's recordings are noted for their elegance of nuance. A distinctly restrained figure at the podium, he encouraged precise playing from his musicians, and painstaking rehearsal from his singers. With this approach, he was able to coax exceptionally fine performances from orchestras and casts of decidedly uneven capabilities, allowing them to rise to the occasion of his performances, and superb work from ensembles such as the Vienna, Berlin, and New York Philharmonic orchestras.

Bohm's 1930s Dresden performances of Bruckner's symphonies, which have been reissued on CD by various private labels, are of particular note for the absence of the Wagnerian bombast with which these works were usually treated. Part of the explanation for Bohm's differing approach, according to some scholars, play with the fact that the Dresden orchestra members were equipped with notably old instruments, dating to Bruckner's own time, which created a sound more in keeping with the actual scores as they were known at the time, and less bombastic than newer, more "efficient" instruments, could produce. His complete recordings in Germany and Austria from 1933 through 1945 comprised a set of more than 20 long-playing records.

His early-'40s recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic are fascinating, despite their obvious sonic deficiencies. His Brahms Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 are especially compelling, although his recording of the Mozart Symphony No. 35 has long since been supplanted by his stereo version on Deutsche Grammophon. It is Bohm's modern recordings for Deutsche Grammophon that are considered the core of his legacy. This includes his recordings of Richard Strauss' music, orchestral and operatic, which have few equals -- only Rudolf Kempe and Herbert Von Karajan -- and his Beethoven, Mozart, Bruckner and Schubert are also considered to be among the finest available. His performances are noted for their carefully nuanced playing, without the bombast of Von Karajan's interpretations. ~ Bruce Eder