Antal Doráti (1906 –1988)

No. 362 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast362

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This week’s new montage pays tribute to a mainstay classical recording artist for several decades of the Twentieth Century, Hungarian-born conductor Antal Doráti.

Doráti made his conducting debut in 1924 with the Budapest Royal Opera. The closing work, Copland’s orchestral suite from Appalachian Spring, serves as a reminder that he has had a fine career as an opera and ballet conductor – most notably with the Ballets Russes (1937-41) and American Ballet Theatre (1941-45).

However, most of us know him for his many recordings - over the course of his career Doráti made over 600. With the Philharmonia Hungarica, Doráti was the second conductor to record the complete symphonies of Joseph Haydn – two of which are featured in this podcast. He also recorded an unprecedented cycle of Joseph Haydn's operas and Ottorino Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Suites 1, 2 and 3.

The opening track of the podcast, Respighi’s suite The Birds, is part of a good number of recordings he made of this composer’s music for the Mercury and Decca labels with several orchestras, most notably the London Symphony and Royal Philharmonic.

He lived to make digital recordings, for English Decca Records (released in the U.S. on the London label), with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for Philips. We have featured some of these recordings – most notably that of Liszt’s Faust Symphony – in other montages.

I think you will love this music too.