Otto Nossan Klemperer was a German conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the United States, Hungary and finally, Great Britain. He began his career as an opera conductor, but he was later better known as a conductor of symphonic music.
Klemperer c. 1920
Kroll Opera House, 1930
Arnold Schoenberg gave Klemperer composition lessons
The Hungarian State Opera, where Klemperer was musical director, 1947–1950
Gustav Mahler was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Gustav Mahler, photographed in 1907 by Moritz Nähr at the end of his period as director of the Vienna Hofoper
Jihlava, the city where Mahler grew up
Mahler was influenced by Richard Wagner during his student days, and later became a leading interpreter of Wagner's operas.
Mahler's home in Leipzig, where he composed his First Symphony